The proposal to revoke the passport has been rejected

The muddle of votes on a request for naturalization that was refused (probably by mistake) on Monday at the Congress Hall at the start of the City Council meeting is not something you normally see every day. Indeed, it may well have been a first. And in all likelihood will not end here. A request to the City Hall to reverse the decision is already on the table - and has been approved by the vast majority of the Committee on Petitions - in order to allow the Legislature to vote again on the naturalization application. Very few people know this, as it is rare, but there exists an article in the Municipal Organic Law which permits such a move (we will come back to this later). However, let's step back and review specifically the events that occurred in Conference Hall B.

The confusion arose over a naturalization request. The Town Hall had proposed to reject it, whereas the Petitions Commission had been unanimous in accepting it. In order to do so, the municipal councillors had to cast a counter-intuitive «no» vote. And several of them were arguably mistaken. So much so that on the first vote the yes votes prevailed and the application was therefore rejected. But from the beginning it seemed that there had been an oversight, so that the president of the City Council Tessa Prati called for a second vote, in which the «no» votes won and the naturalization was accepted. But this procedure was challenged by the League, which considered it «unacceptable» that a new vote should be held just because the progressive area had been mistaken. Prati finally stated that he had recovered the results of the first vote and confirmed them. The naturalization application was therefore ultimately rejected.

This is not to say that the person affected by this mix-up has to say goodbye to his dream of becoming Swiss. He or she can appeal the decision to the Council of State in any event, and if the well-intentioned procedural error is recognized, he or she will probably win easily. But this is an unpleasant option, as he would have to spend money and time rectifying something for which he bears no particular blame. As an alternative, the City Council itself can act: «There are several ways to reverse a decision of the City Council,» says Marzio Della Santa, head of the Local Government Department. In any case, it is a problem that has never arisen in these terms in his four years at the head of SEL. Della Santa explains it as follows: «It is the only area in which a City Hall delivers a negative message. It usually proposes to accept, not to reject. In this instance, therefore, a mirror vote was necessary, and a City Councilor is not accustomed to doing that.

Regarding this matter, as previously mentioned, one of the procedures for the revocation was already activated yesterday. Based on our information, the application, which, according to our information, has been approved by the vast majority of the Petitions Committee, has the objective of legally rectifying a mistake in the expression of a vote by part of the City Council. An erroneous vote which, in this case, has violated the rights of the applicant. In essence, the assembly is asked to provide a solution in order to ensure the integrity of the City and assess what is the best step to undertake for the applicant. The proposal for withdrawal comes from the Commission itself, and for the further progress of the procedure it is encouraging that it has been carried out almost unanimously within the Petitions.

In detail, the revocation procedure is codified in article 63 of the LOC, which states: »The City Council may revoke a resolution by an absolute majority vote of its members«. In practice, the request must now be examined by the Town Hall, which must issue a new message to the Legislature. The latter, then, will have to return to vote. Hopefully with the utmost attention from everyone.