Hammer and Tongues

While politicans and journalists have been splitting hairs about the holiness of the nuclear family and the threat to the survival of Western civilisation as we know it from same-sex civil partnerships, most papers and all the TV news programmes have failed to comment on the fact that  that a judge convicted of corruption and aiding and abetting the Maria, Corrado Carnevale, has been reintegrated into his old job as a judge in the Supreme Judiciary Council (CSM). Eleven votes to ten. Four abstentions.

Carnevale's criminal conviction in the court of appeals in 2001 led to his resignation (voluntary). But the sentence was overturned in the Supreme Court on the flimsy basis that evidence regarding the pressure he put on colleagues to overturn judgements of mafiosi could not be used because it was covered by professional secrecy.

Berlusconi's government rushed to get him reinstated (in a job that he had resigned from), even though he had reached the legal age limit of 75. The previous CSM, with a right wing majority of lay members, claimed that the law did not apply to him,  but the motion to reintegrated him in 2005 lost by one vote.

Though the TAR (Administrative Regional Tribunal) court and the State Council begged to differ with that Government,  they did not go so far as to express an opinion about his automatic reinstatement.

It was our wonderful, present, left-wing dominated  CSM who completed the Berlusconi government's good work by voting Carnevale back into robes, which he will be able to don until he is 83 years old.
 
“How could this happen?”,  asks Marco Travaglio in his article “Carnevale in Quasesima” (“Carnevale in Lent” – (Friday 9 March 2007, Unità).

Easy.

Travaglio explains that of the five lay members of the CSM belonging to the left-wing Union, only two (Volpi and Tinelli) voted against Carnevale's resurrection. One (Siniscalchi) abstained and two (Mancino and Vacca) actually voted in favour together with the House of Bloody Liberties (Cdl), Magistratura Independente (Independent Judiciary) and half of Unicost.

The CSM, Travaglio continues,  was by no means obliged to accept Carnevale's reinstatement: it was one thing for Carnevale to benefit from the tailor-made law and another to get his old job back.  Part of the CSM's job is to evaluated whether or not a judge has the requisites to carry out his job. There have been judges, though acquitted from criminal charges, who have still been banned from their professions for immoral or unprofessional behaviour. One charming aspect of Carnevale's unprofessional behaviour was to call Giovanni Falcone (“cretin”) and insult him and Paolo Borsellino, calling them “dinosaurs whose professional ability was close to zero.” The insults did not cease with their death (“there are certain people I don't respect even though they are dead”).

One example of Carnevale's judge-like behaviour? A supreme court judge, Manfredi la Penna, was to judge the appeal of the murderers of police captain Basile. Carnevale summoned him to his office to persuade hime to annul their sentences. This is just one of a series of misdemeanors which would justfiy a disciplinary procedure. But the motion was chucked out.

The only way now , Travaglio concludes,  to get rid of Carnevale (reportedly in perfect health) would be for parliament to make the 75 age limit for judges applicable to those who have been reinstated too.

Fat chance.

You can read an interview with Carnevale on his “success” here.

THE FILM "PLACIDO RIZZOTTO" is being show tomorrow evening by the student group Giurisprudenza Democratica at the University of Bologna, as their contribution to the commemoration day for the victims of the Mafia. The secretary of the Trades Union office disappeared into thin air on the 10 marzo 1948.

He was 34 year old. A member of the the Corleone branch of the Socialist party, he had fought in the Resistance.Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, at the time a captain in the carabinieri, arrested his murderers, and Pio Della Torre, who was then a university student, took Rizzotto's place as a leader of the peasant workers.

Commemoration day for the Victims of the Mafia

Ansa in Palermo (19 MAR) reports that the case against Salvatore Cuffaro, president of the Sicilian Region (also known as “Kiss-kiss” because of his habit of kissing everyone in sight) is being reopened. The DDA  [the District Anti-Mafia Bureau ] in Palermo has requested that the case against Cuffaro for “concorso in associazione mafiosa” (criminal conspiracy with the Mafia) be opened again. He is presently charged with the less serious (and more difficult to prove)crime “favoreggiamento aggravato”  (“aiding and abetting”) in the spying case within the DDA. Carabinieri officer  Calogero Di Carlo, 45 anni, in service with the Region of Sicily, was accused of blackmail. He allegedly took money from a businessman in private health company. The investigation also involves Antonio Borzacchelli, former carabinieri officer and member of the regional parliament in the ranks of the Union of Democratic Christians (UDC), who was also arrested in 2004  on corruption and blackmailing charges.
The decision to open the case again was made on the basis of new declarations by the collaborative witness Francesco Campanella  and Angelo Siina, as well as recent wire tappings.
You can listen to the trial in the Radio Radicale archive.

A lesser man tha Kiss-Kiss would have resigned, amd for much less: but not in ITALY, where a real man sticks to his seat in Government until he drops down dead, and possibly afterwards too.

In Italy, the first day of Spring is a nationwide commemoration day for all the victims of the Mafia. Meetings, debates and a procession are organised – each year in a different town of the North, Centre or South of Italy. During the procession the years are announced, one by one, and the tragic rollcall of all those who died in that year. As Stefania Pellegrini **, professor of the Sociology of Law at the University of Bologna says, there are no first and second class victims. In the last ten years alone, the number of dead amounts to about 2500. They  all – sadly – have equal dignity.
For those who wish to take part in the commemoration but cannot travel south to Polistena in Calabria where this year's procession will be held, the University student group “Giuriprudenza democratica” are organising an evening in Bologna. There will be a showing of the film “Placido Rizzotto” (the harrowing story of a trades union activist murdered by the Mafia in the late '40s) and – hopefully, a meeting with the director of the film. 

LISTEN

** Professor Pellegrini is currently teaching a seminar on “Mafia and anti-Mafia”