The centre-right mayoral candidate in Lecce, Adriana Poli Bortone, has presented a complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office against the president of the Puglia Region Michele Emiliano, already announced in the last few hours, denouncing an alleged violation of electoral silence by the governor on the Saturday eve of the vote for the ballot. “On 22 June 2024 – writes Poli Bortone in the complaint – when rigorous and dutiful electoral silence was now in force for all candidates in view of the run-off on 23 and 24 June, a report was broadcast on the local television station TeleRama in which act that the president of the Puglia Region, Michele Emiliano, had brought together in the morning all the hospital heads of the city of Lecce” in a city hotel “candidly admitting to the reporter’s microphone that he had come to Lecce to support the candidacy of Carlo Salvemini (candidate centre-left mayor, ed.)”. The fact, “already serious in itself – argues Poli Bortone – because it emanates from a high institutional position – the president, in fact, of the Puglia Region – in full electoral silence, is even more serious because Emiliano, with his very presence , has generated in individuals nominated by himself and by his council, the medical managers present, an illegitimate pressure and a conditioning contrary to every rule that regulates the vote, which must be free, secret and not conditioned by pressure of any kind”. “Being a woman who – concludes the candidate – has spent her life serving the institutions and having deep faith in justice, I formally ask you to verify whether this conduct, as I believe, can constitute criminal offenses and punish the guilty according to the law” .
