Meloni’s ‘remorse’. The CSM elections are described as a ‘debacle’. Criticism of Pinelli and the crisis at MI

Meloni’s remorse. The CSM elections are described as a ‘debacle’. The crisis within MI and the disappointment with Pinelli’s leadership. The right has a leader, Meloni, but who has the right-wing judiciary, the independent judiciary? When Meloni describes these latest CSM elections – the emergence of a single-colour red majority – as “a debacle”, and when she says that the referendum on justice “remains my greatest regret”, she is implying that we are facing a failure. And she blames it on the right.

The majority blames the debacle of these CSM elections on the current vice-president, Fabio Pinelli – a government appointee – who has been found to be too accommodating towards the left and who did not take a strong enough stance in favour of the referendum (but could he have done so?). They blame it on Alfredo Mantovano’s faction, ‘Magistratura Indipendente’. Today, right-wing judges have allied themselves with the left-wingers out of fear of reprisals and have formed a broad-based self-governing body. When six thousand moderate magistrates decide to submit to – and in some cases support and vote for – colleagues who wish to set humanity’s crooked path straight, it means one of two things: either they are afraid, or they no longer believe in the ideal.

The elections for this CSM – another ‘Freccia Lenin’, a red carriage – were described at Palazzo Chigi as evidence of ‘mistakes’ on the part of the Independent Judiciary faction. FdI sources state: “If it were a political party – and within the judiciary, factions are effectively political parties – the secretary would have already resigned.” The ‘Independent Judiciary’ faction had aimed to elect seven councillors but ended up electing only four. A referendum can be lost, but not even Meloni expected to end up with a CSM “as red as the Duma” due to the infighting and lack of harmony within this faction. The two ex officio members, Pasquale D’Ascola (First President of the Court of Cassation) and Pietro Gaeta (Attorney General of the Court of Cassation), are both close to the judicial left. In the past, at least, the two posts were divided: one moderate and one progressive.

Apart from the election jitters of those in government who predict: “We must expect anything and everything; Meloni cannot be blackmailed (a phrase Meloni has used once again to explain the failure to form an alliance with Vannacci)”, there is a full realisation that the moderate camp of magistrates resembles the broad coalition of Conte and Schlein. Primaries would be needed, and fortunately there is only one candidate – Cosimo Ferri, would you believe it – who is already being asked to rebuild the moderate faction; this Ferri, who ran as a lone candidate and was elected. The government’s intention was for this to be the season of the ‘Independent Judiciary’, and the paradox is that Meloni will leave the CSM even more left-leaning than she found it. The ‘Independent Judiciary’ faction imploded following the appointment of Giuseppe Tango as president of the ANM, and since then the judges have repositioned themselves. Claudio Galoppi resigned as secretary, and the moderates went along with the flow. As soon as they realised their careers were going nowhere – that to climb the ranks in the public prosecutor’s office it was better to stir up controversy over the Constitution – even the moderates crossed the line. One example is the Catania Public Prosecutor’s Office, a key office for the government: investigations into immigration pass through there.

The moderates could have elected a prosecutor aligned with them, but a prosecutor from ‘Area’, the progressive faction, came out on top. Who cast the deciding vote in the CSM? Maria Luisa Mazzola of ‘Magistratura Indipendente’. What is the point of posing as moderates if even a leading figure (such as Margherita Cassano, former First President of the Court of Cassation, in the case of Pietro Gaeta) suggests voting for a representative of the other camp? Add to this the success of the ‘Widespread Self-Governance’ project, set up with the support of Md by the current councillor Roberto Fontana (an independent, but who has always belonged to Area).

Fontana is the administrator of a chat group comprising over four thousand judges who act in unison and vote as one on regional appointments. What is the right-wing faction doing? The governing parties, which should have encouraged the moderates (and within the judiciary, as with the RAI, there is only one way to encourage them, namely by appointing judges from the faction), have neglected MI, and MI has taken action. The government did not take sufficient account of the impact of the defeat in the referendum.

Now that that opportunity has passed, there is regret at not having done enough, and the map of the public prosecutor’s offices sends shivers down the spine. Ermes Antonucci (author of the unauthorised biography of Nicola Gratteri, published by Amazon) maps it out like Ptolemy; he always does so in Il Foglio, but it is worth listing a few names, one by one. In Milan, the public prosecutor’s office is earmarked for Maurizio De Lucia, whilst Rome is reserved for Roberto Rossi, currently public prosecutor in Bari. And the public prosecutor’s offices in Venice, Florence and Turin are also ‘amaranth’ – the red of this October, the month that reaps anger. Members of FdI are asking themselves: ‘What if the PD also elects the President of the Republic, a figure in the mould of Napolitano? The CSM will be a firing squad’. In recent days, the new name the right has been putting forward for the CSM is Antonio Di Pietro, whilst the banner of the moderate judiciary is held aloft by Cosimo Ferri, who survived the Palamara affair. Within the judiciary, the right bears a striking resemblance to the left, and the left to Meloni – enduring and steadfast.