The civil judge of the Court of Milan rejected the urgent appeal (pursuant to article 700 of the code of civil procedure) filed in recent weeks by the “Referendum and Democracy with Cappato” list, following his exclusion from the scheduled political elections on September 25th. The appeal was aimed at obtaining admission of the list in the Lombardy district.
“In the absolute silence on the part of the government, Parliament and President of the Republic, the Milan judge found himself having to decide in conditions of objective blackmail produced by institutional inertia. This is also why our action does not end here. An urgent complaint and appeals to international jurisdictions are being prepared ”, commented Marco Cappato in a note.
The Court of Appeal of the Lombard capital and the Supreme Court had already expressed their opinion on the matter, which decreed the exclusion of the list for the question of the presentation of signatures in digital and non-paper format. For this reason, Cappato’s political group had turned to the ordinary judge who, if he had accepted the request, would have also led to a postponement of the vote. As feared by the state attorney, representing the government, in the statement in which, in addition to contesting the recognition of digital signatures, he also specified that “the measure desired by the applicants would require postponing the elections”.
“A senseless decision because it accuses us of not having proved the existence of the signatures, attributing to us a duty – the verification of signatures – which is notoriously in the hands of the Court of Appeal and certainly not of the presenters,” added Cappato.
“The judge was not placed in a position to verify the existence of the aforementioned factual element”, or the verification of the actual presence of the digital signatures collected together with the certificates “of the disputed case (verification that cannot be exempted from doing, pending the dispute of the respondent party), must be considered the non-existence of the prerequisite of the request for precautionary protection, apparently constituted by good law “, wrote the judge in a passage of the motivation contained in the rejection order.
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