1 May 2007

The SME Trial

The SME trial decision shows that the judiciary is not getting tough in relation to Berlusconi. The action of the Milan prosecutors has been legitimate and dutiful because the fact is true, considering that for the same episode other people, intimate connections with the defendant who has been acquitted, have been convicted, even though not in a definitive way because of a last-minute decision to send the case to the Cassation Court.
I’m referring to Cesare Previti. If there is someone who has used the investigation for political motives, I want to understand who that is.
In recent years, the true victim of instrumentalisation has been the magistracy, and in particular the Milan magistrates. They have been subject to political pressure from other institutions, particularly from Parliament who in past years has created “ad personam” laws each time they were of use to their members.
As regards an evaluation of the merits we are talking about a fact which turns out to be true because on appeal Previti was convicted for having carried out that crime in the name of and on behalf of Berlusconi. But in effect it has been admitted that on the right and on the left, this case has been made use of, even though it should have remained a judicial case.
But in this way only Berlusconi’s game has been played. He managed to do what he had in mind from the beginning. And that was to throw the affair into the political arena making out that the judicial case was a political battle, while in fact it was only a personal confrontation with the justice system.
Once he was under investigation, Berlusconi had two options open: run to the magistrates to prove his innocence, and the case would have been closed in a few months. Otherwise fight with them and try to put off the decision for as long as possible. He chose the second route.
Leaving the trial documents to the history books, the moral is that the institutions have come out of it defeated. They are because, when there are acquittals, as in the case of Berlusconi, the investigating magistracy becomes criminalized.
And when, on the other hand, there are convictions, as in the parallel case of IMI-SIR, the one who is convicted, and here I’m talking once more of Previti, he’s not paying the consequences. Considering that he should no longer be a member of the Lower House, and yet, almost a year after his conviction, he is still in Parliament.

(*) text of an interview with il Corriere della Sera

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Justice