1716 Vegno Political Scandal

Vegno Political Scandal

The main three suspects of the investigation: (from left) Antonio Visciglia, Luca Zarrella and Shalva Mancuso.
Country	Vegno
Started	II.1716 AN
Finished	IX.1716 AN
Judges	Carmine Buonsante Michele Benvenuto Francesco Visciglia

The 1716 Vegno Political Scandal was a nationwide judicial investigation into political world in Vegno held in the early 1716, resulting in the demise of the so-called "Moderate era" of the Republic and the resignation of many vegnese politicians and parties. Carmine Buonsante was the main judicial figure in charge of the investigation.

The final sentence of the hearing occurred in IX.1716 with the conviction and arrest of former Prime Minister Shalva Mancuso and other prominent members of the PPV party. the former President of the Republic Luca Zarrella and Antonio Visciglia were instead acquitted for being extraneous to the facts.

Background

Political framework

The political situation resulting from the 1714 Vegno Elections was a sharply jagged and divided picture, with the first party in the country taking only slightly more than 20% of the preferences. In such a divided situation, the center-right and center-left moderate forces that had already dominated the political scene for the previous 10 years emerged again.

Luca Zarrella was re-elected as President of the Republic and again gave the post of Prime Minister to Shalva Mancuso, secretary of the Partito Popolare Vegnese, while other important ministerial posts were assigned to the Antonio Visciglia's Partito Democratico Costituzionale, the last party to win the consent of the moderate majority. The resultin Mancuso II Cabinet had a little majority, but manged to obtain the trust of the Parliament in the days after the elections and began its work not without protests from the opposition parties, that wanted a government of broader understandings with common interests.

The 1715 Regional Elections

However, the national political situation precipitated following the regional elections of the following year (1715) where the extreme right led by the Partito Nazionalista Vegnese of Marco Unno and Michelangelo Lèvati obtained a flood of votes, putting itself in charge of as many as 5 regions out of 10 in which the votes. This surprising result raised doubts about the completely opposite results of the national elections, in which the PNV had obtained only 16% of the preferences with a sharply declining trend. Even then, this led to great uncertainty both within the opposition parties and among the entire Vegnese people, even before the scandal actually came to light.

History

The tip inside the PNV

Following the sensational results of the regional elections, the leaders of the PNV, after some great initial celebrations for the victory, in late 1715 publicly claimed to have received an anonymous tip according to which the results of the previous elections had been distorted and modified by the moderates to obtain the majority, moreover a narrow one, in parliament. After this first declarations by the opposition parties at the end of 1715, the news in newspapers and television mastheads spread very rapidly, putting the majority forces in government under great media pressure.

However, the government's response was swift, and all the leaders of the majority parties and the highest offices of the Republic, including the President and Prime Minister, declared themselves totally extraneous to the affair and rejected any type of accusation, as the news was only a rumour of unofficial news. Despite this, the court of Cossa, under great pressure from the opposition parties who wanted clarification on the matter, began investigations in the first months of 1716 to completely clarify the matter and verify whether there had actually been any alterations in the voting procedures for the 1714 elections. As a response to this start of the proceedings, the leaders of the oppositions, in particular Marco M. Unno, head of the parliamentarians of the PNV, ordered the government for the first time in the first month of 1716 to resign, awaiting the official responses of the prosecution of the capital, because it was absolutely not fair to the people to continue governing with the results of previous elections which may have undergone alterations. The debate in parliament was vehement, with a very harsh response from Prime Minister Mancuso who responded in kind to the PNV exponent, refusing any kind of involvement and saying that he would continue his work in government without tolerating any further threats from the PNV.

The media resonance of this parliamentary debate was enormous, with the secretary of the PNV Lèvati taking advantage of this harsh response from Mancuso to accuse him of having something to hide and trying in every way to increase his consensus against the moderates who were in that moment accused.

The Cossa Tribunal, where the proceeding was made.

Early fases of the proceding

In the months following the first anonymous tip referring to the leaders of the PNV, the Cossa court officially began its investigations, bringing under its scrutiny all the ballot papers for the previous elections of 1714. The first investigations therefore concerned the legitimacy of the ballots that they were not found tampered with or altered; the shocking thing was that many blank or void ballots had been erroneously assigned to the PPV and other majority parties. After this discovery, not only the tellers and polling station presidents involved in the erroneously assigned ballots were immediately entered in the register of suspects, but also the civil servants who should have had the task of controlling the regular assignment of votes; the illustrious names of the President of the Republic Luca Zarrella, the Prime Minister Shalva Mancuso and the secretary of the PDC, as well as the minister of foreign affairs and former president of the republic Antonio Visciglia also appeared among the accused.

The politicians involved, especially those involved in government positions, immediately declared themselves extraneous to the affair, even if they were put under great pressure by the opposition, but initially continued their government work.

In the first sentences many of the accused entered in the register were declared guilty but not prominent political personalities until they were instead directly involved in mid-1716, when the last and most shocking fact of the previous political elections came to light, which emerged in the subsequent investigations by the Cossa Police: the fact that many of the votes assigned to the majority forces and in particular to the PPV, which resulted to be the most statistically involved, had actually been carried out by deceased citizens and not yet removed from the registers of the individual municipalities.

The Complaints and the Resignment of the oppositions

Vegnese deputies protesting the government following the 1716 election scandal.

At the beginning of the investigation, the National Assembly denied the authorization to proceed against Shalva Mancuso and Luca Zarrella, who, as President of the Republic and of the government, still enjoyed parliamentary immunity. That same day Mancuso and Zarrella appeared in the courtroom and in a speech they refused any kind of involvement and attacked the hypocrisy of those who, within Parliament, supported the magistrates' theses, having to continue their government work until the results end of the investigation. While the President of the Assembly was reading the results of the votes, contrary to the authorisation, the deputies of the PNV insulted their colleagues by calling them "thieves" and "cheaters". Public opinion believed that the rescue of the suspects was due exclusively to the votes of the majority of parliamentarians, in particular of Forza Vegno and the PPV, which had many representatives under investigation. In reality, the vote was held by secret ballot and the counts showed that the "no" line was broader, to the point of suspecting that some opposition deputies had also voted in favor of the President and the Prime Minister. This would have happened in order to then cry foul and obtain early elections, according to a technique of using the secret ballot called "the horse move".

The lack of authorization triggered a very violent reaction in parliament. The next day students from Cossa's high schools demonstrated in the streets of the capital: some universities were occupied, in many cities the headquarters of the parties were attacked by demonstrators. In the afternoon the opposition parties (PNV, I Verdi and Vegno Vivo) called a demonstration in front of Palazzo Dilemma, where they demanded the dissolution of parliament.

The definitive collapse occurred the following month when the whole parliamentary group of the PNV together with Peppe Freeda's I Verdi resigned as deputies and refused to return to parliament until an official sentence was issued by the court of what was being dealt with of the case. Therefore, only the majority forces remained in parliament together with the members of Vegno Vivo, who would join the opposition only the following month. Majority leaders continued to govern for the next few months, being strongly accused by PNV members of governing alone in parliament without a debate with the opposition and without popular consent.

Arrest of Shalva Mancuso

In VIII.1716, after the resignation of the parliamentarians of Vegno Vivo as well, the President of the Republic Zarrella was forced to proceed with the dissolution of Parliament; of the 150 members initially foreseen by the constitution, only 81 belonging to the majority had remained and the resonance, the media pressure and the protests of parliamentarians and citizens had become so great as to prevent the continuation of the legislature of the government.

In doing so, the parliamentary immunities guaranteed to the members of the investigated parties were lost and the Cossa court was officially able to proceed with the investigations against the deputies.

In IX 1716, following the fundamental testimony of Giovanni Conso, an official member of the PPV, the final sentence was finally issued. The aforementioned testimony opened the possibility for the Cossa police and the court to finally declare an end to this affair: in fact, Prime Minister Shalva Mancuso, after having himself admitted his guilt, was declared guilty, as well as all the tellers and polling station presidents officially involved in the ascertained voting violations and countless other PPV party members. Shalva Mancuso was then barred from any possible political office and was arrested at the end of the final sentence passed in IX.1716 AN.

Instead, President Zarrella and the secretary of the PDC Visciglia were completely acquitted of all charges, because they were totally unrelated to the events and without any evidence that could declare their involvement.

Final Sentence

Section I of the Cossa Court condemned:

• Shalva Mancuso for personally commissioning the crime and verifying its execution. 5 years and 3 months of imprisonment and life ban from public office.
• Carmine Benevento for commissioning the crime. 4 years and 2 months of imprisonment and life ban from public office.
• Giovanni Conso for commissioning the crime, but depenalized for helping the investigations. 1 year of imprisonment and life ban from public office.
• a lot of PPV members involved in the case.
• all the tellers and polling station presidents involved in the assignment of false ballots.

On the other hand, the Court absolved:

• Luca Zarrella and Antonio Visciglia for not having committed the crime and not being involved in any way.

Effect on national politics

This political scandal has had serious consequences in the vegnese political framework: in fact, the parties of the far-right-green coalition have emerged unscathed and indeed with a strong increase in the popular push.

After the resignation of a large part of the opposition parties and after Shalva Mancuso's registration in the register of suspects, the President of the Republic Luca Zarrella was forced to resign and to dissolve the parliament and call new parliamentary elections for the end of 1716 , less than two years after the previous elections of 1714. It was the first time in the history of the republic that the parliament was dissolved to call new elections without completing the legislature with a duration of only two years.

The polls prior to the elections just called by the president of the republic showed a clear and overwhelming favorite: the PNV and the right-green alliance; in fact, the consensus of the latter parties, although already high before the 1714 elections, following the scandal of 1716, where they ferociously protested against the political class exponents of the moderate parties, allowed them to expand an already substantial portion of the electorate coming from undecided and dissatisfied majority voters.

The popular consensus of the PPV, according to the polls, collapsed sharply after the event, with the probable risk of even remaining outside the parliament; the same thing happened to the other two majority parties, Forza Vegno and PDC, which saw their consents drop steeply, although they were considered by the surveys to be completely unrelated to the affair, their popularity suffered greatly. The former presidents Zarrella and Visciglia therefore, despite being totally uninvolved in the facts and not involved in the investigation, re-nominated for the presidency of the Republic but their re-election appeared, according to the polls, totally impossible, with the PNV that they will most likely go to conquer, for the first time in republican history, both the presidency of the republic and the majority in parliament, being able to form an entirely right-wing government or with minimal help from the Green Party.

With the arrest of its leader who had dominated the vegnese political scene since the birth of the country Shalva Mancuso and with a vertical collapse in the polls, the PPV found itself disoriented and without a guide. The non-condemned leaders of the party therefore had to meet at the end of the process and among them the name of Luigi Pandolfi emerged, a charismatic political figure who had never been in parliament and therefore a bringer of innovation, who immediately took over the disastrous reins of the party to try to restore feet what was left from the ashes of the old PPV in view of the new political elections.

Polling firm	Updated	FV	PPV	PDC	PC	PNV	PF	VV
Università di Cossa	VII.1716	10.1	3.0	7.3	20.1	47.6	3.4	8.5
Termometro Politico	VIII.1716	10.0	3.6	7.2	19.5	48.1	3.5	8.1
TeleV news	VIII.1716	9.8	4.3	7.0	20.2	47.3	3.6	7.8
VAI TG24	IX.1716	9.6	2.6	7.5	21.2	47.2	3.7	8.2

International reactions

•  Benacian Union: The successful purge of public officials under the guise of a campaign against corruption was watched with great interest in the Benacian Union. The scandal, and its subsequent unraveling through meticulous investigation, has become a case study taught in the Benacian Censorate and Magisters-Carnifex on how to dismantle corrupt ruling cadres.