The Regional Council rejects the popular initiative bill to reform Sardinia's electoral law. The reason: insufficient signatures were collected. The problem (and hence the controversy) is that the minimum signature threshold is set by a repealed law (therefore theoretically no longer applicable), which the officials at the Via Roma building consider "ultra-excessive." Therefore, it remains in force.
"Liberamus su votu, " "Let's free the vote": this is the motto and the name of the proposal. The goal was to guarantee all political forces participating in the elections representation in the Chamber proportional to the votes received, with the guarantee of governability stemming from the assembly's confidence system. This is not happening now: the electoral thresholds have excluded large segments of the electorate from the Regional Council (as happened with Michela Murgia, Mauro Pili, and Renato Soru and their coalitions, to name the most notable cases) in favor of a quasi-presidential bipolarism.
The initiative was promoted by the SarDegna network, led by Lucia Chessa, candidate for president in the recent regional elections. During a large-scale mobilization, 8,139 signatures were collected, which were then delivered to the Council for validation and implementation of the procedures that would bring "Let's Free the Vote" to the attention of the already elected members of parliament.
Yesterday, however, came a cold shower, with the response of President Piero Comandini supported by the opinion of Secretary General Danilo Fadda.
It states that "when a popular initiative bill is submitted to the Council, the President, before announcing it in the Assembly, orders a verification of the signature count of the proposing voters to ensure the validity of the proposal." The checks revealed "the validity of 7,152 signatures. Specifically, of the 877 forms submitted, 134 were found to be formally irregular, resulting in the invalidation of the signatures contained therein." The number of signatures deemed valid, the opinion states, "is below the threshold established by Article 29 of the Special Statute for the exercise of the right of popular initiative, which requires the submission of a bill by at least ten thousand voters."
Lucia Chessa emphasizes that "in Tuscany (almost 4 million inhabitants) and Lombardy (over 10 million) , 5,000 signatures are required. In Piedmont, 8,000 are required, despite a population of over 4 million. Requiring 10,000 signatures in Sardinia, with a population of 1.5 million, would express nothing other than a desire to obstruct an instrument of direct democracy established by the Constitution and the Statute." But there's more, and it emerges precisely from the opinion written by the Council offices. Because the article of the Statute cited, they write from Via Roma, "is formally repealed by Article 3 of Constitutional Law 2 of 2001 , which, in deconstitutionalizing the matter, transferred the relevant provisions to the Statute. Based on the practice followed in the Regional Council of Sardinia, however, this provision is considered still in force." It is interpreted as one of the "institutions considered fundamental because they characterize the constitutional system, as its inalienable and unchangeable principles." And until a new specific law is enacted, the 10,000 signature threshold must be considered effective.
"It's a curious argument," Chessa argues today. "The law doesn't exist, but we're resurrecting it just to reject the popular initiative and reaffirm who's in charge. Variations on the theme always repeat the same old tune. But we're not going along with it," he announces. "We believe ours is now a battle for legality as well as democracy, and we've already received opinions from authoritative jurists who say the reasons for the rejection are completely unfounded. We'll officially communicate them to President Comandini, and it will be interesting to know whether a Regional Administrative Court, or an ordinary judge, to whom we appeal, will confirm our theory or theirs."
