Against the Schilirò a political trial, a fork of logic and the usual double standard
And the magistrates who exhorted to "resist resist resist" against the laws of a parliamentary majority they do not like?
One of the most grotesque aspects of a certain way of exercising public power is that it manages to fall into the wrong even when, formally and certainly only partially, it might be right.
In the present case, I refer to the now famous case of the deputy chief of the State Police Nunzia Alessandra Schilirò, who after a brilliant career in the administration of public security, even in very delicate roles such as that of protecting women from crimes of abuse, it ended up in the media grinder and political debate.
It will be said: she has consciously thrown herself into it, with her declarations in that no green pass event . Very true, and indubitable. In fact, in accordance with the regulations in force, I believe that his having spoken yes as a free citizen but presented and qualified by third parties as a director of the state police, in the light of his assertions a mild disciplinary responsibility can integrate it.
I repeat: mild responsibility.
The disciplinary code of the State Police, and the related procedure, is a rather complex framework resulting from the equally complex nature of this peculiar administration: no longer under a military order but still led back into a very peculiar 'civil' bed, of non-privatized public employment and drawn into the highly hierarchical sphere of public safety.
A quick glance would be enough even for the mere listing of the sanctions provided for to realize how, even in a purely semantic key, the public police employee is subject to a general canon of continence and conduct, even off-duty, different from that of the normal civil public employee.
Of course, given that we are in Italy and that here with us everything must become the scene of the absurd and that in the face of the much-heralded guarantee, every event is colored by the tints of the grotesque, no one, from the parties of politics and the majority mass media, has set the question in these terms, with the exception of some noble exceptions: it was preferred to immediately embody the worst of the gallows logic, with even the 'notification' of the disciplinary procedure in the press, without the direct interested party, the 'accused', knowing anything about it . So she declared, writing it in black and white in a Facebook post; it must be said that it would not even be the first time in which an administration, to please the political body intervening in the field with all due respect to the distinction between politics and administration, first warns public opinion with respect to the person who will be called to defend itself.
The ten minutes of Schilirò's speech, the context in which the speech was proposed, the fact that she was presented as belonging to the police and that particular importance was attributed to this aspect and the following interview with the digital broadcaster ByoBlu constitute a problem of conduct that could, at the most, integrate the details of paragraph 2 of article 13 of Presidential Decree 782/1985, according to which the members of the state police, even when off duty, must maintain conduct in accordance with the dignity of their functions, or at the limit the final sentence of article 10 of Presidential Decree 62/2013, according to which in relations between private individuals, therefore extra-service relationships, the public employee does not engage in behavior that could harm the administration to which he or she belongs.
All this is said sine ira et studio . For my cultural background I believe that even these provisions limit in an unacceptable way the expression of free thought, which should be absolute, but as we say this is: this is the legal system and with this, and with the relative jurisprudence formed above, one has to confront.
But what did Schilirò say? And your assertions, above all, are such as to integrate the extremes of the serious sanctions evoked and invoked, in the absence of any disciplinary assessment, by the highest ministerial authority and by a certain part of the political world?
The assistant commissioner began by talking about a situation of unprecedented gravity, in reference to the extension of the Green Pass . Immediately afterwards, in reference to the need to express opposition to this government provision, he evoked the figure of Gandhi to legitimize the 'sacred duty' of civil disobedience.
The parenthesis on Jesus, Falcone, Borsellino, early Christians, early partisans, decidedly excessive and exorbitant in tones and metaphors given the subject of the discourse and criticism, but in any case they are words that objectively do not harm anyone, certainly not to the public security administration: the Green Pass is highly criticizable, and can certainly criticize it with the right tones, where 'right' must be understood in the sense of our legal system, and not in a legal-philosophical key, even those who are called upon to enforce the legislation on which it is based, but remaining in a technical area.
Schilirò is fully entitled to support its doubts about the constitutionality of the green pass and its compliance with our legal system, as it does in the video. More problematic is the desire then to enter into the technical-medical merit by citing generic data, an aspect that completely overflows from a technical criticism.
Some problem, perhaps the real key point of the story, I see it at 8:20 of the speech, when it addresses the police, an aspect that in my opinion could cost you the challenge of the violation of the generic rules of conduct, but nothing goes said it implies particularly severe penalties.
I say it clearly: I consider Schilirò's words questionable and out of focus. But does this imply the exercise of the steel mallet of police discipline, upon political input and with requests for very serious sanctions such as dismissal (ie, dismissal)?
Is it legitimate for a minister to say that he is “personally following”, whatever that means, the affair? By eye, the fact that a minister personally follows a story does not leave one to think well because it implies a very high level of attention, not even Schilirò had done or said who knows what. And perhaps Lamorgese would do well to employ her attention on other fronts, leaving the issues of discipline to the competent administrative bodies.
In fact, we are no longer in the era of the royal exercise of justice, where the latently political sphere and the administrative-judicial one tended to get confused with each other.
None of this is legitimate. Freedom of expression exists and is firm even for public employees subject to specific legal regimes.
They cannot lose their job just because a minister intervenes in the debate with a serious, yes, anticipation of charge and sanction without the disciplinary procedure still open.
This is a distortion of our most essential guarantee hinges which also inform the disciplinary procedure which, although structurally inspired by the inquisitorial, and not accusatory, canon, however, rests on unavoidable rules of law and defense.
Technically, and the Council of State also recalls it with, among other things, the sentence of Section III n. 6150/2020, the sanction for the dismissal of a member of the police must be related to a serious violation and equally serious denigration of his own administration.
It is not, it appears crystal clear, the case of Schilirò which has not denigrated the State Police. At the most, on the point of law, it could be contested with those generic and minor violations that I mentioned earlier, but nothing that would seem to integrate the 'sensationalism' that is affecting public opinion.
From what transpires, and I hope it is not true, it would even be considering sending an information to the Public Prosecutor's Office, for violation of Article 415 of the Italian Criminal Code, which as known sanctions the instigation to disobey the laws of public order.
Indeed, if confirmed, this would appear to be the move to load the matter with gravity, more medically than legally, and to then be able to say that the aim is for dismissal, given that the expulsive sanction, governed by articles 7 and 8 of Presidential Decree 737/81 , is very often accompanied by penalties and related (eventual) convictions.
That Schilirò's words can integrate the details referred to in Article 415 of the Criminal Code, I say with the utmost respect for the judiciary that will eventually be called to investigate but also with the utmost respect for the decorum of our legal and judicial system and the sense of ridiculous, it is a genuine joke: it is enough to retrace the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court on the subject to understand how there is really no place to talk about that crime, because there has been no instigation in a technical sense to disobey the laws, but only a reflection, perhaps colorful and at times a bit kitsch but certainly, goodbye, not criminally relevant.
If by 'disobedience' is meant a mere reference to Gandhi or to 'civil disobedience', without the matter being argued and structured as an actual incitement then we should also put the publishers of poor Thoreau's books on trial.
Obviously we could also say that while for Schilirò the entire media-administrative machine immediately moved with great diligence to object to disciplinary responsibilities, there were assertions of other public employees, and with very other functions and a very different role, for example the Milanese magistrates in the case of the Biondi decree with their famous public communiqué, go free from any kind of controversy or juridically appreciable consequence.
Here too, as always, a pernicious double moral standard that seems to distinguish according to the part of the barricade where one is located and where one militates, tracing the imaginative line of an absolute (progressivism) Righteousness within which one can say and do everything that is pleases, even the 'resist resist resist' against unwelcome legal provisions. And this, this yes, is really unacceptable.
The post Against the Schilirò a political trial, a fork-lift logic and the usual double standard appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/contro-la-schiliro-un-processo-politico-logica-forcaiola-e-il-solito-doppio-standard/ on Tue, 28 Sep 2021 03:52:00 +0000.