Why does politics often end up in legal trouble?
Boccia-Sangiuliano case? Once again Italian politics must end up hanging in a kind of judicial noose. Damato's italics
The thing that angers me the most, to say the least, about the affair which bears the names of Gennaro Sangiuliano and Maria Rosaria Boccia, and which exploded at the end of a summer as hot as it was crazy, is that once again Italian politics must end up hanging from a kind of judicial noose.
Yes I know. Memory, even direct for the less young, takes you back to thirty years ago, that is, to the "Clean Hands" of 1992 and following. When, after a banal separation hearing between the then president of the Pio Istituto Trivulzio of Milan, Mario Chiesa, and his wife who protested about the money that her husband was begging her despite all the very rich bank accounts abroad, he went to the Public Prosecutor's Office of Milan, and the Tangentopoli affair spread to others in Italy. It cost the life of the so-called First Republic.
Yet you are wrong, and very much so. This curse of political news that intersects with judicial news and is swallowed up by it, above and even behind the scenes, goes back even further: to more than 70 years ago, how many have just passed – celebrated by everyone, even by those who were part of it the fiercest opponents – since the death of Alcide De Gasperi.
In 1953, after his last government resigned on 28 July, the Christian Democrat statesman was already following with sadness and apprehension the struggle in the DC for his true, non-formal or provisional succession, which went less than a month later to Giuseppe Pella on the personal initiative of the the then President of the Republic Luigi Einaudi. To whom Attilio Piccioni, long considered the Christian Democrat exponent closest to De Gasperi, had almost mysteriously had to hand over the role of Prime Minister he had received.
Three months before that renunciation, exactly on 9 April 1953, Wilma Montesi had been found dead on the Roman beach of Tor Vajanica. And investigations were started into whether parties, acquaintances and other things could have had anything to do with his tragic end. Rumors spread in the police and surrounding areas about the participation of one of Piccioni's sons, the musician Piero, in that round. Son who was arrested on September 21, 1954 and acquitted in 1957.
Attilio Piccioni would have been equally affected, even though he returned to government positions: vice president of the Council and for a while also foreign minister between 1960 and 1963 with Amintore Fanfani and Giovanni Leone as presidents. I am honored to have been, as a very young parliamentary reporter, among his last regular visitors in the corridors and on the sofas of Montecitorio, where he went almost every day and, chewing some of the sweets purchased at the snack bar, rarely let himself get a few monosyllables from the questions on the events of his party and the government of the day.
They were, I repeat, no more than monosyllables. However, he soon regretted and worried at the same time, to the point of chasing the interlocutor as soon as he left to point out that he had said "nothing" to him, absolutely nothing. And the interlocutor had no difficulty in guaranteeing him maximum discretion.
Times have changed, men and women too, even the Republics, there being at least a fourth in the title of a television program of a certain and deserved success, none of whose guests have ever contested the name. But this curse, I repeat, of political news that encounters or produces judicial news and is overwhelmed by it is not over. And I don't even know, I can't imagine if and when it will end, even though less than two years ago a government was born, led by women for the first time, laudably proposing to restore to politics the primacy assigned to it by the Constitution. And with a Minister of Justice like Carlo Nordio, who despite coming from the judiciary, or perhaps precisely for this reason, with the experience gained with the public prosecution, is well convinced of the purpose and program set by the government of which he was a part.
Come on Minister, come on Madam Prime Minister, get busy and don't disappoint us, no matter how many problems or setbacks you may encounter on your path. And no matter how many insults you may receive from your adversaries, their field may be wide or narrow, arid or muddy. And congratulations, Madam Prime Minister, for finally untying the Sangiuliano knot before it became even more tangled.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/perche-la-politica-finisce-spesso-in-caciara-giudiziaria/ on Sat, 07 Sep 2024 06:39:19 +0000.