Democratic Party (PD)
commissioner in Rome Matteo Orfini and Left, Ecology and Freedom
(SEL) Secretary Paolo Cento have agreed that if embattled PD
Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino doesn't step down by 4pm today, they
will call for a no-confidence motion against him in the city
council.
The PD mayor reportedly said he would "resist" in the wake
of the latest scandal to engulf the PD's representative in the
capital.
On Tuesday, Rome prosecutors opened a probe into the
mayor's expenses after the small rightwing Brothers of Italy
(FDI) party and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) -
the second-largest party in Italy - filed petitions.
Marino subsequently announced he would refund expenses of
20,000 euros from his own pocket and also relinquish his City of
Rome credit card, but this did little to assuage opponents
including within his own party.
Earlier this week, the mayor's office said it would
sue anyone who kept up an "offensive campaign" against Marino
regarding his travel expenses, which are posted online in the
interests of transparency,
The opposition has vociferously criticized Marino's
frequent missions abroad, from which he has returned with 13
million euros in donations from foreign patrons to restore
Rome's crumbling monuments.
Also on Thursday, Stefano Esposito, the city of Rome's
executive transport councillor, said that Marino's council was
moribund. "The situation will inevitably lead us to the end of
this administration," Esposito said before quitting along with
Deputy Mayor Marco Causi.
The mayor who took office in June 2013 faced an uphill
battle from day one of his administration, as he inherited a
city with depleted coffers and a mafia scandal that would soon
explode during his watch, nearly engulfing him.
Marino has been under pressure to quit following
a probe into allegations a mafia organization muscled in on city
contracts, even though he is not personally implicated.
"I found a financial black hole of some 900 million euros
in city coffers," Marino told RAI's
UnoMattina program earlier this week.
The mayor added his predecessor Gianni Alemanno left city
transportation company ATAC with a deficit of 874 million euros.
"I put (ATAC) right," he told the public broadcaster.
"The company will break even in 2016. We're back on track
now, but our starting point was a city that had been left in
ruins," he said.
In September, Marino was again the object of controversy
over a trip to Philadelphia to join Pope Francis on the United
States leg of his Americas tour.
A fracas erupted when the pope said he had not invited the
mayor, and the mayor replied he never said he had been invited.
"The mayor never said he had been invited by Pope Francis
to the closing events of the 8th World Meeting of Families," a
city statement said.
Marino's trip to the United States, a month after he had a
vacation in the Caribbean and the US, stirred controversy in
the capital.
In July, Marino's center-left coalition lost its junior
allies from the Left Ecology and Freedom (SEL) party as SEL
Deputy Mayor Luigi Nieri quit and the party declined to sit on
Marino's reshuffled city council.
"We continue serving Rome," SEL coordinator Paolo
Cento said at the time. "We leave the council seats to the PD's
one-party government".
Marino's council has lost several members in the wake of
the sweeping corruption probe into a local mafia of politicians,
businessmen and gangsters that muscled in on lucrative city
contracts for garbage collection, parks maintenance, and refugee
reception centers.
Marino has been under pressure to resign ever since the
scandal broke last winter, even though he not been named in that
investigation but his predecessor, Gianni Alemanno has been
included in the probe.
Marino carried on, ruffling more feathers as he said he
would replace the board of ATAC public transport company and
fire managers under whose watch the city's transport system has
degenerated into chaos.
The mayor added the city would seek private partners for
ailing ATAC, sparking transportation strikes that added to the
already incandescent climate in Rome in which work-to-rule
subway strikes caused thousands of irate commuters to get
trapped in underground tube stations during a ferocious heat
wave that lasted most of the summer.
But even as Marino announced plans to fix Rome's
chronically dysfunctional public transport system, including
firing managers, Italian newspapers were filled with headlines
of the capital city's decline coming from such publications as
The New York Times.
Valeria Fedeli, Senate deputy speaker, said the clock is
ticking for Marino to take serious measures to clean up Rome.
"It is unclear" why the Italian capital "cannot be as clean
as other European capitals," Fedeli, a member of Marino's
centre-left Democratic Party (PD) said.
"Marino has 24 hours to present a team and decide the
program quickly to solve Rome's problems".
The mayor defended his performance, saying he didn't expect
to find opposition from his PD or infiltration by criminals in
city management.
"Two years ago I certainly didn't think I had arrived to
govern Stockholm, but nor did I expect to find a rotten PD
against me or criminal infiltration of top city management,"
Marino said in an interview with newspaper Corriere della Sera.
The mayor has been repeating himself since last year, when
he told a news conference for foreign reporters that upon taking
office he immediately called finance police in to
inspect city hall accounts in a bid to end corruption.
"I immediately began to take decisions that no one had ever
taken in Rome before," he said in December 2014.
"I asked (then-economy) minister Saccomanmi to send finance
police inspectors. I wanted a third-party evaluation".
The result, he recalled, was a 200-page report that
disclosed "many illegitimate procedures" used in city government
before he took office, as well as "a budget deficit of 800
million euros run up over the previous three years."
He recalled that he had obtained the closure of the city's
huge Malagrotta waste dump, and the businessman who ran it was
arrested.
He also took steps to end abuse at the city's own insurance
company, Assicurazione di Roma, whose board members were issuing
loans to themselves.
Marino insisted that "I am not an investigator," but said
he had been to the office of the Rome chief prosecutor six times
to denounce illegal practices in local government he had become
aware of.
"I knew there would be difficulties," he said. "But I had
no idea they would be of this size".
Earlier that month, Rome prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone said
that several associates of the capital's former mayor Alemanno,
who is among 100 people probed for alleged links to a mafia
organisation, were full-blown mobsters.
"Some men close to former mayor Alemanno are full-blown
members of the mafia organisation and the lead players of
episodes of corruption," Pignatone said.
Pignatone said that things have changed to some degree
since Marino replaced Alemanno last year, but not completely.
"The relationship has changed with the new administration,
but (organization leaders Massimo) Carminati and (Salvatore)
Buzzi were relaxed, not matter who won the (2013 city)
elections," Pignatone said.
In November 2014, as the Rome mafia scandal rocked the
capital, the mayor came under fire for unpaid traffic fines,
which he later paid off to quell the controversy.
Eight 80-euro fines were slapped on Marino's car after he
allegedly forgot to renew a permit, but the mayor says someone
deleted from the system his authorization to drive his red Fiat
Panda to work while his permit was being renewed.
The incident came to light after opposition New Centre
Right (NCD) Senator Andrea Augelio accused
authorities of "freezing" the fines as a favor to the
center-left mayor, who has incensed many by extending pedestrian
zones in Rome's historic center and removing free parking spots.
Marino has also incurred the wrath of the right by taking
strong stands in favor of gay marriage and immigrant
integration.
In October last year, Marino disobeyed the city prefect's
order to scrub the recent transcription of foreign gay
marriages.
"We do not accept the prefect's order to cancel the
transcriptions that have already been logged," he said of his
purely symbolic move.
Marino in his defiance of the interior minister joined a
number of mayors across Italy, including those of Milan,
Bologna, Udine and Grosseto.
He walked into contested, administrative no-man's land
when he transcribed 16 same-sex marriages legally performed
abroad at the Rome prefecture.
In Italy, civil unions between same-sex partners are not
yet nationally recognized, much less marriage, which is defined
as a union between a man and a woman. However the recognition of
same-sex marriages performed abroad, especially in countries
with which Italy is bound by treaties, the question is subject
to debate.
Marino has received support from gay activists and lawyers
of couples whose marriages were transcribed, but the Catholic
political movement Italia Cristiana has registered a
formal complaint against Marino for contravening State law. The
movement also called for the centre-left politician to be
removed from his post.
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