Dear Editor,
The French politician and writer Jean Mistler (1897-1988) used to say that “La majorité a toujours raison, mais la raison a bien rarement la majorité aux élections” (“The majority is always right, but reason very rarely has the majority in elections”). It is one of the paradoxes of democracy, that system which is “the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried so far” (Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 1947).
Take the case of the referendum on the separation of careers. The people have spoken, and their verdict is final. Just as the decisions of the Court of Cassation are final. For example, former PD senator Stefano Esposito knows this well. Investigated by the Turin prosecutor’s office in 2015, he remained under investigation for seven years and was finally acquitted of all charges. Well, the Supreme Court confirmed the disciplinary sanctions imposed by the CSM on the deputy prosecutor and the preliminary hearing judge who had used wiretaps that were supposed to be destroyed. Because Esposito was, precisely, a senator.
The Cassation ruling established “the violation of the law committed by both accused, considered serious and caused by ignorance and negligence.” All this will cost the preliminary hearing judge a reprimand (that is, a censure that could slow down her career); the prosecutor will lose one year of seniority and be transferred to the Milan court as a civil judge. “Promoveatur ut amoveatur,” in short. And best wishes to the citizens of Milan.
That’s not all. As journalist Ermes Antonucci of Il Foglio pointed out, the illegal wiretaps against Esposito were authorized by 15 (fifteen) different judges for preliminary investigations, despite the fact that the investigated person was a senator and therefore authorization should have been requested from the Chamber to which he belonged.
In a normal country, the disciplinary section of the CSM would have evaluated the conduct of all 15 judges for preliminary investigations who accepted blatantly illegal requests, as well as all the prosecutors who agreed with them. In fact, the authorization requests were countersigned by then deputy prosecutor Gabetta (later promoted by the CSM as the new prosecutor of La Spezia) and his activity supervised by the various heads of the Turin prosecutor’s office (Armando Spataro, Anna Maria Loreto). But is it a normal country that, out of hatred for Meloni, rejected the reform of the judicial order outright, as Totò would say?
Postscript: the Cassation has ordered that, if the sentence is discussed, it is forbidden to name the two sanctioned magistrates to protect their rights (which no other ordinary citizen enjoys). So please, if you talk about this shameful affair, never mention the names of prosecutor Gianfranco Colace and preliminary hearing judge Lucia Minutella.
