Administrative, the Court of Auditors blocks Bianco’s race in Catania: incandidabile – Corriere.it

Sensational twist with repercussions on the elections in Catania. Based on the sentence of the Jurisdictional Section of Appeal of the Court of Auditors of Sicily on the financial instability of the municipality of Catania which involves the former mayor Enzo Bianco and the junta of the time (from 2013 and 2018) and the auditors , Bianco is not a candidate for 10 years for the offices of mayor, president of the province, president of the regional council, as well as member of municipal councils, provincial councils, regional assemblies and councils, Parliament and the European Parliament. There is also a ban on holding, for a period of 10 years, the office of municipal, provincial or regional councilor, and offices in bodies supervised or participated by public bodies.

Enzo Bianco’s candidacy was already ready, the former mayor was working on the composition of transversal civic lists. The new sentence of the Court of Auditors changes the scenarios. Bianco’s candidacy upset the games and alarmed the centre-right and centre-left poles. Bianco mayor for many legislatures, popularly still called “’u sinnicu Bianco”. The former interior minister and current president of the Anci National Council intervened with a harsh note in which he speaks of a “blatantly wrong choice” and a “legal opprobrium”.

White says: “A mixture of anger, pain and pride: this is what I feel after the surprising sentence of the Court of Auditors. I struggle to find a way to comment on what happened yesterday in Palermo: whoever really caused the instability, already certified in 2012 by the predicted instability, got away with it. Instead, those who worked to avoid it, as I and my junta did, are instead punished. In short, a serious incentive for all local administrators to declare the instability of their municipality as soon as they face the first financial problem. The charges against me concern only 3 items out of the 800 (income and outgoings) that make up the City’s budget. And all together they represent just 1.2% of the total amount”.

White adds: “No one, not even the Court of Auditors, has ever claimed that the instability was caused by the action of my junta. The sentence concerns the opposite: having tried to avoid it. Well, I would do it again a thousand times! I would not declare the instability as soon as it was established, as I could have actually done by washing my hands of it. I would try a thousand times to avoid the financial bankruptcy of the city. A thousand times I would do the acts and actions carried out to save Catania, my Catania, from the default that others – perhaps those who now even allow themselves to gloat – have caused with an infinite number of omissions, off-balance sheet debts, patronage and waste. All waste widely certified by the courts. It is no coincidence that when I took office in 2013 Catania was already in a state of collapse, decreed by the Stancanelli junta for the financial disaster caused by the Scapagnini juntas. I am a man of institutions and will always respect the judiciary. Even when a tiny fraction of it makes a blatantly wrong choice.”

White for not throwing in the towel: “All the various pronouncements of recent years have reduced the sentence and canceled the interdiction. On the other hand, it is surprising that, two months after the administrative vote, this last sentence clearly goes against the trend. And I will deprive the people of Catania of being able to express themselves on my person. Of course I will never give up. Regardless of how long it takes, I will work with all my might and in every degree of judgement, to eradicate this legal opprobrium”. In Catania the candidate for mayor of the Pd-M5S axis, the economist Maurizio Caserta, is on the field, while in the center-right the showdown between the Fdi and Matteo Salvini’s League continues (whose candidate Valeria Sudano shows no intention of making a step back, and the city of Etna continues to be plastered with its electoral posters).