Fourteen seats for the Democratic Party, seven for «Decaro Presidente», four each for Per and M5s. For the opposition, eleven to Fratelli d’Italia, five to Forza Italia and four to the League, plus the defeated presidential candidate Luigi Lobuono. The Central Electoral Office formally concluded its work this morning, with the identification of the names and the transmission of the report to the prefectures. But the vote is in fact concluded and corresponds, in its results, to that which emerged from the website of the Ministry of the Interior in the aftermath of the November vote.
The Central Electoral Office of the Court of Appeal of Bari has in fact decided to leave any interpretative decision on the Apulian electoral law to the administrative justice system: it is in fact conceivable that there will be appeals. Yesterday the judges led by doctor Giovanna De Scisciolo, who had already deemed the questions contained in eight briefs filed by non-elected candidates to be unfounded, also rejected the request with which the Democratic Party (through the lawyer Pierluigi Balducci) asked to assign 32 councilors to the centre-left and not 29 as required by regional law. The request relied on the adverb “at least” contained in the law, which however determines the majority bonus in a fixed figure while the Democratic Party tried to argue that 64% of the votes should correspond to 64% of the seats: the electoral commission suspended its work and then decided to stick to the literal provisions of the law.
If the blitz had succeeded (Decaro’s representative, Professor Giuseppe Morgese, also joined the request) the further three seats would have been taken away from the minority which instead maintains 21 councillors: 42% of the total compared to 36% of the votes. The last quotient, the fifth, was taken away from the League to guarantee the place to the defeated gubernatorial candidate.
The division of those elected therefore sees a territorial imbalance, which was already highlighted immediately after the results of the ballots. The province of Bari (which has almost a third of the inhabitants of Puglia) in fact obtains nine councillors, the same as the Bat (which according to the census on which the proportional division is based is the smallest), while the largest number of elected representatives (ten) is assigned to the province of Foggia: an illogical division which, in fact, seems to derive from the decision to rigidly apply the sliding mechanism (in the assignment of majority seats) on which the sentences of the Council of State were concentrated five years ago.
In the Democratic Party, therefore, three seats are confirmed in Bari (Paolicelli, Vaccarella, Pagano) and in the Bat (Ciliento, De Santis, Vurchio) and two in Brindisi (Matarrelli, Lettori), Foggia (Piemontese, Falcone), Lecce (Minerva, Capone) and Taranto (Pentassuglia, Borraccino). Decaro’s civic body takes two seats in Foggia (Starace, Scapato) and one in the other provinces (Spaccavento, Rutigliano, Gioia, Miglietta, Fischetti). The Five Star Movement has seats in Bari (La Ghezza), Foggia (Barone), Lecce (Casili) and Taranto (Angolan). The seats of Lecce (Leo), Bat (Passero), Bari (Tammacco) and Foggia (Tutolo) go to «Per».
As far as the opposition is concerned, Fratelli d’Italia obtains two seats in each province (Spina and Ferri in the Bat, Caroli and Scianaro in Brindisi, Gatta and De Leonardis in Foggia, Pagliaro and Basile in Lecce, Perrini and Vietri in Taranto) except in the one where things went better, namely Bari (Scatigna enters). Forza Italia is represented in Bari (Minuto), Foggia (Dell’Erba), Bat (Lanotte) and Lecce (Mazzotta who is incompatible due to pending litigation) and Taranto (Di Cuia). The League closes with Romito in Bari, Cera in Foggia, De Blasi in Lecce and Scalera in Taranto (the seat “lost” to the defeated presidential candidate was in the Bat).
This morning, as mentioned, the electoral office finished compiling the report and sent it to the prefectures and the regional council. No formal proclamation ceremony: the prefectures take care of the notification to the elected representatives. The report can be challenged before the TAR with the procedure foreseen for electoral matters, which on paper should guarantee rapid decisions but which in this case could see numerous appeals.
Those who will challenge the failure to exceed the threshold, which is calculated on the votes of the presidential candidate and not those of the lists, have no hope: the attempt was made five years ago and ended with a double negative sentence from the TAR and the Council of State. However, the question regarding the allocation of seats to the provinces in the majority distribution remains open, on which the law is unclear and the interpretation should be anchored to a ruling of the Council of State in 2021.
