It has the rigor of a history book, the rhythm of a novel and the courage of a true journalistic investigation, the latest work by Goffredo Buccini, signature of Corriere della Sera, chronicler of all these years, and today rigorous narrator of a related and chilling sequence of events which, over thirty years, have made justice more political than politics and politics more justicialist than justice, within a stunned Italy , whose final short circuit – from Tangentopoli onwards – becomes, not surprisingly, the succession of cultureless populisms of recent years.
“The Republic on trial; judicial history of Italian politics 1994-2023”: this is the title of the volume by the editorialist and Corriere correspondent, born in Rome but with Neapolitan roots (and first steps in journalism), presented on Saturday at Salerno Letteratura. Laterza published it, three years after “The time of clean hands 1992-1994”, which instead the two years of Tangentopoli, from Mario Chiesa to Silvio Berlusconi. And this second volume picks up the thread right where he left it, completing a courageous and frank speech, which brings together the facts, does not skimp on opinions but documents with surgical precision – and twenty pages of notes – the profile of a country where the separation of powers is such only because they do not speak to each other but constantly duel, challenge each other, threaten each other, clash, giving rise to anything but a balance, but to a permanent hysteria.
The story
A Republic on the verge of a nervous breakdown. On trial, in fact. Buccini’s book (384 pages, 22 euros) follows a strictly chronological order, and thus succeeds in its aim of lining up the judicial and political events of the last 30 years, leaving the reader astonished. We knew everything but we had never seen it like this. They make an impression, the things told in such a sequential way, one after the other: you can glimpse the distortion on all sides, the shrill sound of a democracy going through a profound crisis. Bettino Craxi escapes arrest, from his African exile he resists attacks by fax. While Italyorphan of the parties that had governed it since the post-war period, relies on Silvio Berlusconi, which creates one in a matter of weeks. He won the 1994 elections. His entry into the field (“Italy is the country I love”) is accompanied by the arrest of his brother Paolo, as if to say that the story continues. But the new majority – there is An, there is the League – is not going to clash. «We are still in the phase in which the future prime minister – writes Buccini – thinks he can govern the exit from Clean Hands, dividing the Borrelli pool into a left-wing faction to be annihilated and a right-wing one to be incorporated. He ascribes to the first Colombo and D’Ambrosio. At the second By Pietro and Davigo. The calculations, as we will see, will prove to be wrong.” The symbol will be Di Pietro himself who, having given up his toga, will then even become a political leader.
The Naples case
In Buccini’s book, there is a long reference to Luigi De Magistrisex pm of Catanzaro. «Another magistrate who ended up in the crosshairs of the caste and then of the CSM and even of the ANM», notes the journalist in his book, quoting the definition he gave him Marco Travaglio, to indicate a sort of new hero. Stripped of some investigations, transferred, De Magistris becomes the Di Pietro of the 2000s. A symbol, a media face, finally, clearly, a politician. MEP and then, for ten years, mayor of Naples. A parable which, however, was not followed by another famous Neapolitan magistrate, to whom Buccini dedicates considerable space: Henry John Woodcock. «He will always choose the toga – writes the Corriere reporter – worn with the tenacious conviction of being right but with a no less sensational aftermath of controversy». Meanwhile, Berlusconi’s years were punctuated by legal battles (from Previti to Dell’Utri, from the Olgettine to Mubarak’s niece, from the ad personam laws to Severino, from the expulsion from the Senate to the return to the Chamber), but also the left which, from the misunderstanding of Amendola’s clean hands to the unconditional support for judicial investigations, turned a blind eye to the distortions, ending up as a victim itself. So, first D’Alema, then Renzi’s parable (with the tails of recent times), and then a Rome, Mafia capitaland within this context, a non-secondary protagonist, a journalism that calls itself judicial but completely forgets the trials (where the parties are in balance) and only reports on the investigations (where the parties do not exist but there is only the accusation), with a fatal attraction towards prosecutors and a total intolerance towards judicial truth, that of sentences, up to the funny, paradoxical, grotesque ending (but will it be the end?) of the Palamara affair, with the real short circuit of the judiciary which, almost 30 years after Tangentopoli, makes a sensational spin, involuntarily illuminates all its shadows, and with the condemnation of even Piercamillo Davigo, draws in an almost elementary way the portrait of a country that has lost its thread and, perhaps for this reason, relies a little on populism and he just doesn’t want to know anymore.
Luckily, such a well-documented book, as rigorous as a history manual and as meticulous as a news story, with the courage to take a position by listing the facts, reminds us of what has happened to Italy in the last 30 years, and what can happen again.
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