If, as it seems, justice will be the battlefield for the European elections, the CSM is the most exposed trench. The shelling by Anm, Pd and red robes against a reform for which there is no text yet has already begun. But for the center-right, friendly fire risks being fatal.
The council chaired by the lawyer Fabio Pinelli, well-liked by the Northern League, Matteo Renzi and Luciano Violante has not yet fully met expectations. If there is a signal on the front of clearing the backlog (and it has been seen, see the clumsy accusations of fanaticism and collateralism leveled against the former vice-president David Ermini), the breaking of protocols and practices such as imposing one’s vote By splitting the Council, it created some problems.
It seemed that the astral conjunction in the country – center-right in government, non-left-wing president, credibility of the robes at an all-time low after the miasma linked to the ouster (and subsequent revelations) of Luca Palamara – could be the ideal moment for the ideologically driven and militant judiciary was pushed back into its irrelevance, as much as it is a minority within the judiciary as well as in political structures.
And instead the entanglement between red and moderate robes materialized. In the former Palazzo de’ Marescialli, named for a few weeks after the jurist Vittorio Bachelet killed by the Red Brigades, the colonels are moving. If Md promises «to want to fight careerism and clientelism», precisely to mark a discontinuity with the electoral tricks of its members in previous council elections, on paper the only independents are Andrea Mirenda (elected by repechage) and the Milanese prosecutor Roberto Fontana, historian militant with a heart divided between Area and Md. The six exponents of Area move in unison. The centre-left current seems to have made a pincer agreement with the centrists of Unicost, orphans of Palamara who continue, as needed, to play on multiple tables. On the other hand, this time it was the independent judiciary’s turn to deal the cards: the more moderate and liberal officials, who had built their victory within the category with almost 24% of the votes and eight councilors on the rebirth of the judiciary, had wide fields to chase away the ghosts of the opposition between robes and politics in the television arenas and in the newspapers, as well as the promise to restore the centrality of merit in the dicing of appointments, at the cost of making Pinelli’s votes weigh (as has happened more than once).
A desire that was a harbinger of backlashes and incidents along the way, with the councilors who felt bypassed, irritating – in several circumstances – the Quirinale, who chastised the councilors by inviting them to carry out their mandate «without worrying about seeking consensus for themselves or for other subjects”. Like the almost unanimous appointment of Roberto Mucci as legal advisor to Pinelli, the new general secretary of the self-governing body of the robes (“He who sees everything and knows everything”, say the advisors), voted by everyone except the attorney general of Cassation, Luigi Salvato, who will leave his post in just under a year and be punished by the TAR, as well as for the appointment of Alfredo Pompeo Viola as deputy prosecutor in the Cassation. The Pizzino del Colle had a precise direction: «The composition of diversity is not achieved by resorting to exchange logics, which ensure the interest of individuals or groups», thundered Mattarella last April 17 during the baptism of Palazzo Bachelet. “Let it be clear to everyone, such a method would represent the denial of pluralism.”
Even the magic circle of the Minister of Justice played its game, repeatedly dismantling the agreements laboriously reached in order to muscularly demonstrate its weight and influence in the face of a minister who is uncertain about how to move between the two worlds but who has helped many turn up one’s nose. An influence that became decisive after the farewell of Via Arenula’s chief of staff Alberto Rizzo, the former president of the Vicenza court who returned to the judiciary. «Be careful, there is not a single figure that moves, as Palamara once did. But the basic agreement with Area serves to ensure that Unicost is not left out of the agreements”, a former councilor who knows the palace maneuvers well tells us.
What agreements? «The appointment of Stefano Musolino, a courageous Calabrian anti-mafia prosecutor recently appointed with merit as a substitute in Reggio Calabria. But also the promotion of prosecutor Luca Tescaroli sent a couple of months ago from Florence to Prato as chief prosecutor”, confirms a Unicost representative who prefers anonymity. Together with Luca Turco (one step away from retirement) for years he has been chasing the ghost of the alleged State-mafia agreement that Silvio Berlusconi and Marcello Dell’Utri signed, denied by history and by a host of sentences. Even the appointment of the deputy Gabriele Mazzotta from Area as the new advocate general of the Cassation (while Giulio Romano, magistrate of the Massimario office in the Cassation near MI, seemed to be in pole position) seemed like a double help, to the left-wing currents but also to the new chief prosecutor of Florence Filippo Spiezia, vice-president of Eurojust since 2017. «No agreement with the left on Spiezia – a source close to Mi specifies to Il Giornale – his curriculum as an anti-mafia and anti-terrorism prosecutor was enviable compared to his competitor Ettore Squillace Greco of MD, who came from a small prosecutor’s office like Livorno» and who is was defeated thanks to Pinelli’s vote, which was also decisive for the appointment of Concettina Epifanio as head of the Palmi court. “Freeing the Florence Prosecutor’s Office from everyone also seemed like a favor to Matteo Renzi,” a source close to Unicost sneers. An improper comparison put in black and white by Foglio which aroused the ire of Spiezia, who took legal action. Another problem for Pinelli, another problem for Quirinale and via Arenula. «Which too often rhymes with Area», they sneer in the corridors of the ministry.
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