Sixty-five pages to reject "the appeal of Alessandra Todde against the order-injunction of the Regional Electoral Guarantee Board at the Court of Appeal of Cagliari adopted on 20 December 2024 and notified on 3 January". The Court of Cagliari, with Judge Gaetano Savona, confirms the effectiveness of the provision against the President of the Region which orders the Regional Council Election Committee to rule on the forfeiture caused by alleged irregularities in the reporting of the expenses of the 2024 electoral campaign . A bomb that explodes in an already unstable political system.
Having resolved the reservations regarding the admissibility of the various parties in the case, the Court enters into the merits of the case.
Contrary to what the governor's lawyers claim , "there is no reason to believe that the provisions of Law 515 of 1993 on electoral expenses, supervision of the same and related sanctions are not applicable to the Sardinian regional elections". This means that the causes of forfeiture provided for parliamentarians, provided for by national law, are also applicable in Sardinia because the island law on the matter refers to them and adopts them.
Other arguments put forward by Todde's defense: she was a candidate for president (even though she is a regional councilor), so she was exempt from the application of the law on reporting. Not only that: her dismissal would entail abnormal consequences with respect to the objectives of the legislator, because if she goes home, the entire Council goes home, as provided for by the Sardinian electoral law (which is added to the national one). Furthermore, according to the appellants' opinion, "the sanctioning system should be the result of a specific and conscious choice by the legislator, which in this case does not exist".
The Court "does not share the thesis". For the judges of Piazza Repubblica "whoever runs for the role of president of the Region is also running for the separate role of regional councilor. The fact that the candidacy occurs through an electoral mechanism distinct from that of other councilors does not eliminate this circumstance". The legislation on electoral expenses, "in fact, is designed to protect transparency and control not only of the expenses that each candidate has incurred in the electoral competition, but also of the related sources of financing". With specific reference to the presidential candidate "then, it must be added that the protection of transparency must be particularly significant". Whoever wrote the rules, the sentence continues, is not an inexperienced person who could not have thought of the consequences of the law, which in its combined provisions between national and regional provides for everyone to go home for regional councilors: "It cannot be thought that this is the result of an oversight by the legislator, who did not take into account the consequences of the violation by the president of the Region of the provisions on electoral expenses".
"The statutory law", explains the judge, "refers to state laws in terms of incompatibility, ineligibility and forfeiture, and was adopted when the form of government was already the current one and regional law no. 1 of 1994 was in force. It is therefore not possible to assume that the legislator was unaware of the consequences connected by his express will to the forfeiture, for whatever reason, of the President of the Region".
The ruling also addresses another point of the appeal: the causes of forfeiture would be «only and exclusively the failure to submit the declaration referred to in art. 7, paragraph VI (the reporting, ed.) and exceeding the spending limit (which is not applicable to the presidential candidate)». And Todde had declared (at first) that she had only used funds made available by the party. Or rather, by the M5s electoral committee.
The ruling establishes that "Dr. Todde's thesis according to which she was not required to submit the declaration of expenses and her own financial statement due to the circumstance that all the expenses of her campaign were incurred by the Movimento Cinque Stelle Electoral Committee must be disregarded ". Furthermore, it is "highlighted that the M5S Electoral Committee is not the party or political formation of which Dr. Todde was a member". Transparency comes into play here: according to the Court, "the logic of the regulation is to be found in the need to guarantee transparency (and the consequent possibility of control) of the sources of financing of the subjects who take part in the elections. All interpretations of the legislation to the contrary, and which therefore legitimize structures and organizations that create (or risk creating) opacity, are contrary to the logic followed by the legislator". Therefore, "considering a committee to be something analogous to a party or political formation that has presented its own list means legitimizing a mechanism that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to effectively control the funding and expenses of candidates."
Having dismantled the defence thesis, the Court maintains that " the appellant was required to submit the declaration of expenditure and the financial statement (...)" because "she received the funds for the electoral expenses from the Committee, a body which does not fall within the list of parties or political formations of which she was a member".
The conclusion? "It must be said that the fact charged to the appellant is clear and consists of not having presented the declaration of expenditure and the relative financial statement". And "even the case law of legitimacy has held that, in the hypothesis of material filing of a declaration and a financial statement that are however legally non-existent, the challenge of the Electoral Guarantee Board is that of failure to file tout court". In short: Todde's financial statement does not exist.
From the circumstances analyzed "and, in particular, from the fact that the appellant received funds not from the party or the list to which she belonged, the obligations on her part also arise to appoint a proxy, open a current account dedicated to receiving funds and expenses of the electoral campaign, sign and certify the financial statement by the proxy, and produce an extract of the bank or postal current account". Things that Todde did not do.
The violations, it emerges, "are not mere irregularities or formal defects, but are substantial and serious violations (as well as multiple), as they completely disregard the discipline regarding electoral expenses, making it impossible to verify with certainty the funds received by the appellant, the financing entity and the use of the sums".
The Court therefore rejects the appeal but specifies: it is not up to us to pronounce the forfeiture, but to the Regional Council. As was known from the beginning.
The Elections Committee of the Chamber had already announced that it wanted to wait until the Court of Cassation. If the whole thing holds up after a blow like the one it received this morning.
