The State-Panda negotiations: a 2027 of rampant lawlessness

Negotiations between the State and Panda – that’s what it was. The government has scrapped the road tax, and Dr Ida Teresi, an anti-Mafia magistrate, a member of Area, and a member of the Central Executive Committee of the ANM, with the precision of a police composite sketch, saw through the plot: “Small cars are typically used by wealthy drug traffickers and wealthy Mafia members… and are almost always the only ones formally registered in their names”. She posted this yesterday on Facebook at 8 a.m., presumably after listening to the radio. She also clarified: “The big ones, clearly, are registered in the names of frontmen.” Typically, of course, on Wednesday the Council of Ministers presented the country with one of those inkblots that psychologists show to patients on Rorschach charts: a decree exempting vehicles from road tax. And everyone, according to the rules of the game, has read their own interpretation into it. The motorist sees a good hundred euros in it, the opposition an electoral handout, the regions a gaping hole in their budgets; but Dr Teresi, as is evident – indeed, quite clearly – has constructed the theorem of all theorems (and we do not understand why she then went on to clarify that she had been misunderstood): the boss drives the small car and registers it in his own name; the front man registers the off-roader in his name, though it still belongs to the boss; so that between the Panda and the SUV, no car is spared, and the only Italian spared from suspicion is the pedestrian – provided they walk briskly and carry no handbag.

One might be tempted to say that when logic dons a judge’s robe, it’s best to walk. But such are mere jests. Rather, behind the sentimental rhetoric about families and the high cost of fuel, the secret nature of Meloni’s measure has finally been revealed. Palazzo Chigi is stripping the drug trafficker of the last vestige of tax compliance he had left and consigning him to a 2027 of complete and unbridled illegality, whilst even gifting him 167 euros. One can only wonder whether the anti-Mafia lawyer follows the same line of reasoning when she moves from the morning press round-up to the documents of an investigation. As it happens, on Wednesday – the very day the Council of Ministers exempted small cars – the plenary session of the High Council of the Judiciary (CSM) approved the criteria for psycho-aptitude tests for magistrates, and amongst the cognitive requirements listed ‘analytical reasoning’ and ‘critical-inferential thinking’. The ANM protested strongly. Fortunately, however, the tests will only apply to those entering the judiciary, whilst those who have been in post for some time remain, typically – and clearly – eligible.