The Minister of Justice cannot think he can escape from his political responsibilities by shoveling muck and insults onto me (see the ANSA.it article), for facts anyway that resulted in the condemnation of those who defamed me. With his untimely and inappropriate disciplinary action against the magistrate De Magistris, he has provoked a political and judicial short circuit that has in turn provoked the crash of the credibility of the institutions that risks to topple the whole government.
I know full well that with the Prosecutor General’s action of moving up the investigation, the criminal investigation will continue its work, but this is not the point. The problem is that that “avocazione” {action of claiming a task by one who is higher up in the hierarchy} has been caused exactly by the one who could have been put under investigation by the magistrate who has been pushed aside.
What emerges from the battle that the Minister of Justice has knowingly provoked in relation to the magistrate who has put him under investigation is the image of a political class which using the example of the Berlusconi Government, does not want to be judged and so invent anything and everything to stop the magistrates from doing their duty.
Once more the impression is given, whether or not it is true, that those whose turn it is to be in power, look for, and manage to find, short cuts to eliminate magistrates who are inconvenient and to undermine the independence of the magistracy.
There is the impression that the powerful, and only them, are able to move mechanisms that allow them to choose the magistrate that is obliging and to remove from the scene those who do not play their game. This is a political fact of extreme seriousness in which there is the involvement not only of the Minister of Justice but the whole Government starting with the President of the Council.
Romano Prodi is now called upon to take on a delicate act of responsibility in relation to the opportunity of allowing the person at the head of the justice system, the Minister of Justice, to keep the role as he is the one who took the disciplinary action against the magistrate who has put him under investigation.
We are at a cross roads that if it is not tackled straight away and with determination, will topple us all because we are risking endangering the State based on the rule of law, as certain authoritative observers have stated and the majority of the general public.