Abuse of office and the Severino law: this is the turn of Meloni’s guarantor

No more mayors with the “fear of signing”. Giorgia Meloni chooses the ANCI assembly to announce the turning point in the crime of abuse of power, which for years forced local administrators to live in the nightmare of investigating a crime whose application has often been the subject of controversy and which has led to the opening of a huge amount of processes that ended in stalemate, but not without having written the final word on administrative experiences and political careers. “I think the time has come to address the issue of local administrators’ accountability,” Meloni explains to the audience. “It is absolutely necessary, in my opinion, to better define, based on abuse of office, the criminal rules relating to public administrators, rules whose perimeter is today so elastic that it lends itself to overly discretionary interpretations”. The head of government warns of the fact that “in a public administration steeped in bureaucratic constraints, afflicted by administrative hypertrophy, mayors are too often called upon to make interpretations that make their choices risky and we are witnessing the phenomenon of so-called “fear of the signature “». «Today an administrator – he summarizes – today does not know if his behavior will be judged as criminal tomorrow. are resolved with acquittals or dismissals. «However, the Prime Minister observes again – from the moment of the notice of bail to the deposit, years pass, reputations and families are destroyed, because for a respectable person obviously the judgment it is already a pity and I think that we cannot leave our administrators at the mercy of penal rules so minimal that they lend themselves to very arbitrary interpretations”. The issue is not just abuse of power. Also on the table is the issue of the Severino law, which was also the subject of one of the referendums that failed to reach a quorum last spring. To speak, at the same venue as the ANCI assembly, the undersecretary of Justice Francesco Paolo Sisto. «The Severino Law – says the lawyer and federal deputy – unfairly penalizes public administrators convicted in a first instance sentence and who must suffer the consequences before the sentence becomes final and that also applies to the abuse of power, a slippery crime not because it is written, but how it is judged”. Words that, of course, were well received by the mayors present. “The responses obtained from the government have been positive, but I told Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni that we are used to giving answers to citizens who verify our commitments. We will also verify their commitments”, said the president of the ANCI Antonio Decaro, concluding the works of the assembly. of criminal responsibility for mayors, the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, presented the work and reflections already carried out in Parliament » explains Pie ro De Luca of the Democratic Party. “Also in this legislature – he continues – we presented a global proposal for reform. Let’s start from here. If so, you will find the Democratic Party willing to make the existing regulatory framework more reasonable and precise, which weighs on the mayors of our country”. Concept reaffirmed by Forza Italia headquarters in the Chamber Alessandro Cattaneo: «As a former mayor, I can only highlight the importance of the role played by Italian mayors and also the heavy responsibilities that this position imposes. That is why it is necessary to put the Municipalities in a position to spend Pnnr’s resources well and immediately and give them the freedom to work with serenity, without the so-called subscription nightmare. In this sense, the revision of the abuse of power rule becomes a priority that can no longer be postponed”.