Yesterday, June 15th, the twelfth edition of the Salerno literature festival began at the Church of the Addolorata in Salerno and will be held in various places in the historic center of Salerno until June 22nd.
The inaugural meeting was held by the creator Ines Mainieri and the artistic director Gennaro Carillo, by the mayor of Salerno Vincenzo Napoli and by the president of the Campania Region Vincenzo De Luca. Following this, the journalist of “Corriere della Sera” Goffredo Buccini presented his latest book The Republic on trial. The first meeting could only start from one of Kafka’s symbols, the theme of this edition, which in his “The Trial” encapsulated, in an emblematic way, all the complexity of access to justice.
The edition, therefore, opens with the Justice section with Buccini’s accurate representation of the relationship between the judiciary and politics, from 1993 to 2023. Thirty years of conflicts that have determined both politics and the judiciary. According to the author, the theme arises from the first Mani Pulite trial in October 1993, carried out by Antonio Di Pietro’s pool. At the time, the traditional parties were being dismantled, causing an ever greater loss of trust in them and in the political class. Politics, therefore, was based on a condition of instability and weakness.
The conflict between politicians and magistrates dominated the history of the Second Republic and did not end with Mani Pulite but continued with the Andreotti trial which transformed him from Beelzebub into a Divo, and continued with Berlusconi’s accusations of the red robes and his read individually. A troubled history full of lights and shadows and compromises.
The tension between the executive and judicial powers was also the result of a perennial instability of governments and the lack of credibility of politics. The complexity of these thirty years of controversies is described precisely and in detail by Buccini who shows a story from various perspectives, despite the narrative to which a certain superficial journalism, as the author himself states, has accustomed us. Buccini’s reconstruction does not limit itself to clarifying history for us, but makes us understand how this dysfunctional relationship between politics and justice is fundamental to contemporary Italian history and is still central. Just think of the inability of politics to legislate on certain issues, such as civil rights, on which the judiciary is called upon to respond and intervene.
Here, the difficulty of untying these knots between the political class and the judiciary has contributed to increasing that sense of rejection of the system due to the lack of credibility of the institutions, and therefore, to the birth of populism. Craxi’s escape, Di Pietro’s abandonment of his toga, Andreotti’s deification, have left the message that this country cannot be trusted, according to Buccini, and this has led us to the fervent growth of populism from the grillini of ” wow” to those of today.
If politics wants the judiciary to become autonomous and independent again, it must regain credibility. Buccini’s analysis concludes by invoking a healthy application of article 54 of the Constitution which proclaims discipline and honor to fulfill public functions; only then will the conflict between the judiciary and politics be healed.
