Having archived the European and local elections with satisfactory results, they say, for all the parties, politics is already looking to the next appointments: above all those regional elections which are looming with two unknowns whose effects are not yet known.
The unknowns
The first is the date: last time, in 2020, the vote was held at the end of September due to the pandemic. Until now it is not known whether the polls will be held in the autumn or whether, instead, it will be brought forward to the spring: the government will decide that. The second is the reduction in the number of councilors from 50 to 40 due to the under-calculation of the resident population. According to the Istat update as of 26 September 2023, the Apulian citizens registered as of 31 December 2021 amounted to 3,992,941, with a decrease of 3.2 percent compared to 2011. A reduction which, due to its indirect effect, causes a smaller number of councillors, almost halving the citizens’ representatives in ten years, given that until 2015 there were seventy regional councillors. The trap will concern the six electoral constituencies which then correspond to the Apulian provinces. At the same time, the quotas of majority and minority councilors will be reduced, while the weight of those free-hitting representatives will grow. Just think of the role of Antonio Tutolo who, despite having been elected in Con, Michele Emiliano’s civic body, is in the mixed group. Furthermore, electoral experts always explain, representation is reduced by increasing the distance between voters and elected officials.
Possible solutions
So we are trying to stem this new cut with two hypotheses being examined by the parties across the board. The first is to push the State-Regions Conference to propose an intervention that avoids the reduction, the second, however, concerns gradual containment, i.e. linking the cut of regional councilors to the percentage of reduction of residents. In practice, if the number of citizens has decreased by a certain amount, that will be the measure of the cut and not by a flat twenty percent as would happen if we went from 50 to 40. At the same time, selections for candidates for president have already begun, even in the centre-left , given that the hypothesis of a third term for governors is still far away. Among the names circulating are the two fresh MEPs Antonio Decaro for the center-left and Francesco Ventola for the center-right, who could be joined by the parliamentarian and regional coordinator of the M5s Leonardo Donno.
