The President of the Region Alessandra Todde is not a regional councilor like the others. Her dismissal would entail the automatic dissolution of the entire Regional Council and this would be an "abnormal consequence". Triggered, moreover, by a State body (the regional electoral guarantee college) that would have acted with "abuse of power" or "bad exercise of power". This is why the highest Sardinian assembly must support the Council in the conflict of attributions (between the Region and the State) that must be raised before the Constitutional Court by March 4.

This, in short, is the content of the motion that will soon be brought to the attention of the Parliament of Sardinia (as early as Tuesday): at the moment a draft is circulating, which could be modified up until the time of presentation. But there are already some signatures, all from members of the majority that supports President Todde. And it is unlikely that the text will be distorted.

The story is well known: on January 3, the regional electoral guarantee board (composed of magistrates from the Court of Appeal, accountants and a university professor) delivered to the governor the document that threw the Sardinian political class into panic: an injunction order of forfeiture for irregularities in the reporting of the expenses of the electoral campaign. Todde's lawyers have already filed an appeal with the ordinary Court (hearing set for March 20), but the Regional Council has decided to relaunch and wants to support the president in the clash before the Constitutional Court. By sending everyone home, the decision of the Board - it is the thesis - would be an interference in democratic life and a lack of respect for the popular will expressed with the vote of February 2024. Even if the forfeiture is established by a regional law that has absorbed the national legislation.

"The abnormal consequence of the automatic dissolution of the Regional Council makes it necessary to examine in depth the relationship between the structure of the competences of the Electoral Guarantee Board and the constitutional prerogatives of the regional political bodies (President of the Region and Regional Council) ", is written in the motion.

The hypotheses for the dissolution of the regional political management bodies «are strictly established by constitutional norms such as articles 15 and 35 of the Special Statute of Sardinia (and by norms
legislative acts expressly authorised by constitutional provisions)», continues the text, «and implying derogations from the democratic principle of popular sovereignty are of strict interpretation, so that the legislator could not legitimately introduce further hypotheses in the absence of explicit constitutional authorisation».

The law that establishes the system of forfeiture for reasons related to irregularities in reporting dates back to '94, when the president of the Region was not directly elected and, above all, when the fate of the entire assembly was not tied to his office. Therefore, according to those who propose the motion, the application would no longer be current.

«The president has an election system that is different from that of regional councilors in several respects: from the ways of expressing the vote, to the delimitation of the spatial scope of the candidacy which in fact coincides with the entire regional territory and not with constituencies, that is, with limited portions of the regional territory». Therefore «the president is not an elective councilor, that is, a councilor who becomes such by virtue of the council election, being in fact elected as head of another body, and that is, as head of the monocratic body called “president of the Region”». Therefore «councilor by right». And the «regional discipline
on the reporting of electoral expenses, dating back to 1994, was conceived with regard to elected councillors, a category which also included the President of the Region in the form of government with an assembly tendency in force at the time» therefore «it cannot be considered applicable to the case of the President (in the form of government in force today), at least in the part in which it assigns to the Electoral Guarantee Board the power to impose the sanction of dismissal on the President».

According to the motion, that body "cannot ascertain, order, impose or even propose the dismissal of the President of the Region, thereby indirectly ordering the automatic dissolution of the Council, since its jurisdiction is limited to the causes of dismissal that affect only the elective regional councillors, with the exclusion of the President of the Region, who is a councillor by right".

The document must now be examined by the Council, which is trying to defend itself by playing the Constitutional Court card.

Enrico Fresu

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