Tension over justice is rising again with a new clash between the government and magistrates and the opposition attacking the executive. The fuse was lit by minister Guido Crosetto who in an interview with Corriere della Sera claimed that the government can only be put at risk by the “judicial opposition” and reports having learned of “meetings of a current of the judiciary in which they discuss how to “stop the anti-democratic drift to which Meloni is leading us”.
A stance that comes on the very day in which the ANM brings together its members in Rome on the attacks made in recent months by the government and the majority against the magistrates – starting with the Catania judge Iolanda Ippolito – who disavowed the Cutro decree on the subject of migrants . The minister’s accusation is “fake news” which “has no foundation” and “is bad for the institutions”. It is an “attack” on the magistrates, but also “a malicious representation of the country’s institutional system”, replies the president of the ANMGiuseppe Santalucia, who considers the representation of a judiciary “that works against” and that becomes “political-party opposition” to be “misleading”.
Other replies to the minister arrive from the meeting of the robes. Ciccio Zaccaro, secretary of Area, the group of progressive robes, accuses Crosetto of “delegitimizing the republican institutions”. While the secretary of the Democratic Judiciary, Stefano Musolino interprets Minister Crosetto’s words as “a warning” to the judiciary to “conform to the government’s aims”.
But it is above all in the field of politics that the climate becomes incandescent, with the opposition (with the exception of Italia viva) censoring Crosetto’s statements and inviting the minister to report to Parliament (“immediately”, as the member of Parliament urges +Europa, Benedetto Della Vedova) or to go to the prosecutor’s office if he has proof of what he says. So much so that the head of the Defense replies to the criticism several times, explaining that he did not intend to attack the judiciary, but “only to defend the institutions by seeking the truth” and assures that he is ready to present himself to Copasir or to the Anti-Mafia.
“If the minister knows something that endangers national security, let him say it. Otherwise, this government should stop issuing veiled threats” warns Debora Serracchiani, head of Justice of the Democratic Party, while the parliamentarians of her Anti-Mafia group ask to establish “the Crosetto’s hearing as soon as possible. Crosetto’s accusation against the magistrates is “very serious” because it means attributing “subversive purposes” to a part of the judiciary: if the minister has such relevant information, the president of the M5s Giuseppe Conte urges him, “he must immediately go to the prosecutor’s office”. Even for Action leader Carlo Calenda “a minister cannot report magistrates’ plots without denouncing them: we are not at a sports bar”. Not even the national president of the Democratic Center Bruno Tabacci makes any concessions: Crosetto’s are “free words”, while Angelo Bonelli (Avs) and Giovanni Barbera (Communist Rifondazione) speak of “subversive” declarations. IV leader Matteo Renzi instead raises the problem of the reasons why Giorgia Meloni “blocked the justice reform”.
Few voices from the majority. Forza Italia sides with Crosetto and takes the ball to ask that the justice reform, a “priority”, be done before that of the premiership, as urged by the group leader in the Chamber Paolo Barelli and the deputy Alessandro Cattaneo. Reform also called for by the secretary of the UDC, Lorenzo Cesa.