Mayors with the tricolour sash
Widespread abuse of the councilor’s band, it is necessary to restore value and dignity to the use of symbols
In the convulsive and confusing life of national institutions we learn that a Ligurian regional councilor, Angel Vaccarezzacurrently in Go Italyattended a commemoration of the RSI on Mount Manfrei in the Savona area, to commemorate an alleged massacre of 200 soldiers of the San Marco which supposedly occurred in 1945 at the hands of the partisans.
The use of the conditional is most appropriate, since there is no documentation that this happened, even according to the archives of the RSI itself. According to the reconstruction of various scholars, it would appear that there were 8 shootings.
But the point is not in the proportions of the massacre, on which historians must decide, but in the fact that a regional councilor decided to participate in the event wearing the band of the Liguria Region. The sash that representatives of institutions wear in official ceremonies has a high representative meaning and a high symbolic value from the ceremonial point of view. Let’s talk about it.
It is known that protocolarically the tricolour sash mayors wear it and the blue sash is worn by provincial presidents. This is established by a state law, legislative decree 18 August 2000, n. 267. Article 50 in fact establishes that: “The mayor’s badge is the tricolour sash with the coat of arms of the Republic and the coat of arms of the municipality, to be worn over the shoulder. The badge of the president of the province is a blue sash with the coat of arms of the Republic and the coat of arms of his province, to be worn over the shoulder”. The formulation of the legislation occurred at the end of a process desired at a national level to strengthen the identity and symbolic value of representation.
A previous circular from 1998 (no. 5/98) from the Ministry of the Interior had been particularly incisive on the value of the tricolour sash for mayors: “The use of the tricolour sash by the person representing the local community is characterised by its highly symbolic value (…) The high institutional role played by the mayor therefore requires a correct and appropriate use of the tricolour sash in the full awareness of the dignity and decorum of the office, and such as not to undermine the reality of the State as an element of legal unity, within which every citizen is required to participate in the maintenance of the values that characterise and found it”. Precise, measured and irrefutable words: decorum of the office, legal unity of the State, maintenance of values.
The regions were out of this discussion. In compliance with the principles of autonomy established by the new Title V of the Constitutioneach region can act on its own, that is, each can decide to equip itself with its own band, with its own colors and characteristics. And here a moment of confusion comes in. The topic falls within the context of the ceremonial of the Republic.
The sash is an element of recognition in public ceremonies. When there are several mayors, they are all uniquely identifiable by the tricolor they wear; when there is a sequence of blue sashes, it is not wrong to recognize them as the expression of the Presidents of the Province; if instead we have a harlequinade of sashes we should understand that they are the Presidents of the regional council.
And this is the first controversial point: since representation is a matter of Ceremonial, it should be the State that regulates it. This is established by various sentences of the Constitutional Court.
But, returning to the specific case, the question is another: the band must be worn by the top representative of the administration. Therefore, a mayor or a president of the body, whether provincial or regional. Exceptionally, and by express delegation, it can be handed over to a vice mayor or a vice president or a councilor present as a representative.
And let’s be clear: there is only one sash available in each institution and it is available only to the top representative. If even municipal, provincial or regional councilors had the right to wear the sash, among other things for initiatives not officially recognized within the scope of the unity of the State, but to their own personal taste and liking, where do the “dignity and decorum of the office” and the “maintenance of institutional values” end up?
In short, any one city councilor has the full right to identify with the contents of a given event (although in this case one smells of historical revisionism and an attack on the values of anti-fascism), but cannot decide autonomously to go to the Palace, pick up the sash and go and wear it, giving the impression of representing the entire institution. Let’s decide once and for all to restore value and dignity to the use of symbols, which the ceremonial tries to guarantee… But how much effort!
*formerly responsible for the Office of State Protocol and for the Honours of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers which has seen seven prime ministers parade through Palazzo Chigi, from Silvio Berlusconi to Mario Draghi, passing through Mario Monti, Enrico Letta, Matteo Renzi, Paolo Gentiloni, Giuseppe Conte.
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