Saturday April 08, 2023 | 6:00 p.m.
Former Salta mayor convicted of corruption of minors was authorized to be a candidate. //Photo: Argentine News.
Former Salta mayor convicted of corruption of minors was authorized to be a candidate. //Photo: Argentine News.
A former mayor of a Salta district who had been dismissed and convicted of corruption of minors will present himself as a candidate in the next elections to try to govern the municipality again.
This is Juan Rosario Mazzone, who was in charge of the El Bordo district until 2015, when he was involved in a scandal over a party with half-naked minors.
Two years after his dismissal, he had been convicted of corruption of minors: in defending himself, the leader had defined himself as the victim of an “opposition political operation” and had indicated that he did not know the age of the adolescents who were in his home.
Eight years after his controversial departure from the Municipality of El Bordo, the Electoral Justice authorized Mazzone to compete as a candidate in the provincial elections on May 14.
The justification for the ruling was that the leader had already served his sentence, which did not include a disqualification from holding public office.
“The considerations made regarding the ethical or moral quality of a person cannot be evaluated by this Court to prevent their application, in the sense that it is not possible to create requirements or impediments for the exercise of political rights that the law does not provide. nor does the Constitution authorize it,” said the Electoral Tribunal in the midst of the controversy.
As published by the newspaper The Tribunethe magistrates added: “From the reports required to the Appeal Court and the Trial Court, it is clear that Juan Rosario Mazzone, indeed, has a conviction record (JUI 120807/15), notwithstanding which, the date of the judgment (2/17/2017) and its ratification by the reviewing court (9/16/2019), prevent the application of Law 8,275, the term of sentence having expired”.
Salta’s law establishes that “those convicted by judicial sentence in the second instance may not be candidates for provincial and municipal elective public offices while the sentence lasts.”
