The Viminale has chosen the date of the next administrative elections, which will involve 1.021 Italian municipalities, of which 153 above 15.000 inhabitants: residents of those Municipalities (more than 9 million in all) will be called to the polls on Sunday 11 June to elect mayors, city councils and district councils. The date was set by Interior Minister Marco Minniti with his own decree, in which it is specified that any ballot round for the direct election of mayors will take place on Sunday 25 June, as usual two weeks after the first round.
They go to the vote in particular four regional capitals: Palermo, Genoa, Catanzaro and L'Aquila. Also noteworthy are the consultations of Como, Lodi, Legnano, Sesto San Giovanni, Monza, Belluno, Padua, Verona, La Spezia, Parma, Piacenza, Lucca, Pistoia, Frosinone, Lecce, Taranto, Trapani.
PALERMO - One of the key challenges is that of the Sicilian capital, where the favorite is the outgoing mayor, Leoluca Orlando, who is running for his fifth overall mandate (the first was in 1985): Orlando is supported by the "Democratic and Popular" coalition, formed by the Democratic Party and the popular area (Popular Alternative, or the former Ncd, and Centrists for Europe). The candidate of the 5 Star Movement will challenge him Hugh Forello, who won the municipal elections in January but was then disheartened by the Movement's parliamentarians and overwhelmed by the grain of false signatures. The outsider could instead be the independent Fabrizio Ferrandelli, already a candidate in 2012 and leader of the "I Couraggiosi" movement, with a profile according to some somewhere between the grillini and the first way Orlando: however, a judicial trouble has hit him not just recently: he is accused by the pentito Tantillo of vote of political-mafia exchange. Francesco Greco is in the race for the centre-right.
GENOA – An exciting match also for Genoa, where Beppe Grillo recently torpedoed the candidate chosen by the 5-star municipalities and above all where the Democratic Party must redeem the bitter defeat suffered at the regional elections in 2015, when the center-right candidate Giovanni Toti surprisingly defeated Raffaella Paita . The center-left tries again with Gianni Crivello, current councilor for civil protection of the Municipality of Genoa: therefore the outgoing mayor is not a candidate again Marco Doria. The challengers will be Marco Bucci of the center-right and Luca Pirondini of the 5 Star Movement, in place of the revoked Marika Cassimatis.
THE EAGLE – Instead, a more confused situation is expected in the capital of Abruzzo, where both the centre-right and the centre-left are divided over the candidates to be presented. There will be no primaries in the center-right, even if the Salvinians are pushing to dispute them; those of the center-left are also in the balance, because in the end small groups of small parties could find the square on a table on a name from the Democratic Party. The new name proposed by Forza Italia is that of Luke Bergamot, even if the League insists on Luigi D'Eramo. The after Massimo Cialente, in short, it will be a game to be played and this could be the year of the civic lists, of a centrist pole or of the 5 Star Movement, which however has never particularly taken root in L'Aquila so far.
PARMA - Another fascinating challenge, even if it is not a regional capital (but still a municipality with 144 voters), is that of Parma, where the outgoing mayor Federico Pizzarotti, elected in the ranks of the Movimento 5 stelle and then out of the party after the well-known controversy with Beppe Grillo, announced his candidacy for a second term, with the civic list "Effetto Parma". The grillini will try again anyway, but the feeling is that a large part of their electorate will follow the esteemed outgoing mayor. The Pd instead, through the primaries, has chosen Paolo Scarpa. The outsider is Luigi Alfieri from the civic list "Parma is not afraid".
To be precise, 796 cities in the regions with ordinary statute and 225 in the regions with special statute go to the polls, where the holding of elections is set independently, even on a different date from that set for the regions with ordinary statute. In detail, there are 153 municipalities with over 15.000 inhabitants, of which 25 are provincial capitals (among these 4 are regional capitals: Palermo, Genoa, Catanzaro and L'Aquila) and 858 are smaller than 15.000 inhabitants. On the site www.interno.gov.it the complete list of the municipalities concerned can be consulted: overall almost 10 million citizens are called to vote.
