Csm divided, the Northern League candidate is deputy. Mattarella: “Promoting cohesion” – Corriere.it

THEThe vice president of the new Superior Council of the Judiciary is a “lay” member indicated by the League, the lawyer Fabio Pinelli. A name with which the center-right realizes it
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also at the top of the self-governing body of judges and prosecutors, which split into two opposing parties: 17 advisers for Pinelli and 14 for the other candidate Roberto Romboli (indicated by the Democratic Party), plus one abstention. An outcome achieved on the third ballot, from which another signal emerges: Pinelli was voted for by the majority of the lay councilors chosen by Parliament (8 out of 10) and by the minority of professional officers elected by the magistrates (8 out of 20).

But beyond the alignments, immediately after the appointment the most pronounced word was «cohesion». Starting with the head of state who presides over the CSM, “guardian of the autonomy and independence of the judiciary”. Sergio Mattarella, who probably would have appreciated a less contrasted result, asked the newly elected to “promote the cohesion” of the Council, because “shared decisions make the work of the CSM more authoritative and effective”.

For the president, the differences between lay and professional members “they are only in the origin”, and all must be “represented, listened to and guaranteed by the vice president in the exercise of their functions”. A warning that Pinelli immediately accepted, assuring the directors who did not vote for him “the guarantee of listening for the higher purpose of the unity of the Board, so that it is always on the lookout for shared and oriented choices also according to the different positions of each”.

After the troubled experience of the previous Csm, shaken by the “Palamara scandal” and by internal tensions that have undermined its credibility and authority, an attempt is therefore made to move on. But what was written yesterday highlights a division which can in any case be summarized, in general terms, in a contrast between right and left. Attorney Pinelli arrived at the CSM on a proposal from the League, personally desired by the leader Matteo Salvini, and yesterday he wanted to thank “the political party that thought it could spend and invest” in his name, emphasizing however that he is “a figure not political and independent.

The election took place by secret ballot but from various reconstructions it has emerged that the 7 laymen of government derivation, the 7 independent magistrates (the “conservative” current of the togas), the “anti-current” judge Andrea Mirenda, the layman of the Renzian faith Ernesto Carbone and probably the Attorney General of the Cassation Luigi Salvato. The latter allegedly abstained in the first two ballots, to then orient himself on the name that had garnered the greatest consensus in the previous votes. The other member by right, the first president of the Supreme Court Pietro Curzio who will retire in a month, continued to abstain.

For the constitutionalist Roberto Romboli on the other hand, the eight councilors of the judicial left (6 from Area, 1 from Md and an independent), the 4 lawyers from Unicost who were not decisive results as thought on the eve, Romboli himself and the layman indicated by the Five Stars Michele Pope. On which, in the pre-vote negotiations, Unicost attempted to converge the consensus of the other togates to arrive at a unitary choice, but without success. «The failed election of Romboli – comments the councilor Marcello Basilico of Area -, a constitutionalist who has studied the judicial system but has also practiced it within a judicial council, is a lost opportunity for everyone. Having said this, we immediately offer Pinelli the maximum collaboration, having appreciated his intervention immediately after the election ».

It is the short speech in which the new vice president evoked the judge Rosario Livatino and his quote on the importance of being credible rather than believers, to guarantee a CSM “credible, transparent and never oblique in the interest of the country”. But other words of Pinelli’s also sound significant in the current political context; for example those entrusted to Justice question, a journal of the democratic judiciary, to say that on issues such as wiretapping, separation of careers and mandatory prosecution it is desirable to experiment with the recently approved reforms before implementing others, because «without an adequate “application pause”, the risk of destabilizing the judicial system and compromising the process of rebuilding the relationship of trust between politics, the judiciary and citizens appears to be concrete». Considerations that take on even greater importance when some Forza Italia deputies presented a constitutional bill yesterday to divide the careers of judges and prosecutors; very divisive proposal and opposed by all (or almost all) of the judiciary.