Taormina: “Do you read ad personam? I don’t deny them. They were self-defense in the face of the judges’ intolerable games”

«Berlusconi was one of the very few Italian statesmen with De Gasperi, Moro, Andreotti and Craxi», says Carlo Taormina, criminal lawyer and university professor, former member of parliament for Forza Italia and undersecretary of the Berlusconi government in 2001.

How did you meet?
«We were introduced by our mutual friend Pino Leccisi, a member of the DC. It was the end of 1993, Forza Italia was being born. He wanted to ask me about judicial matters ».

Which?
«Not the personal ones, which the lawyer Contestabile dealt with, but the ideas of justice reform that he already had in mind. Thus began a beautiful relationship.

Did you immediately join Forza Italia?

«Yes, but without applying in 1994. I had a role of technical-legal support on these ideas».

What ideas?

“Two. The reform of the accusatory process, which the Constitutional Court had already dismantled; and the reform of the judicial system with the separation of careers between prosecutors and judges”.

Berlusconi did neither.
«In 2001 he gave me the task of writing a major reform project. We did everything to get it discussed in Parliament, but every day there was a guarantee notice or a trial. All kinds of interference intervened, to slow down. In the end we only managed to make sectoral reforms, sometimes patches worse than the hole».

On the other hand, you made many ad personam laws.

“I don’t deny them. They were self-defense in the face of the intolerable games the judges played. Berlusconi was scientifically electrocuted. Unfortunately those laws were often approved in a bland form».

For example?

«The law on the postponement of trials for legitimate suspicion. One evening in October, Berlusconi telephoned me saying that it could no longer be done according to my proposal due to the opposition of President Ciampi. I explained to him that doing it differently would have been useless. He preferred to do it anyway and in fact it was useless». Has Berlusconi polluted democracy?
«Berlusconi, like and more than now Meloni, was systematically denied the legitimacy to govern. He had to defend himself.”

Was Berlusconi backing down from reforms to solve his judicial problems?
“He never backed down. He has sometimes had to back down on a parliamentary level because he was forced, on a personal or business level. But he also reaped procedural advantages from those legislative reversals ».

What do you mean?
«Don’t make me go into details. Some trials have had surprisingly favorable outcomes. It had become a party game.”

Had he established good relations with any magistrate?

«Sometimes we had established a dialogue with someone for behavioral advice, but with limited results. 99 percent of the magistrates were hostile to him.”

Not just the red robes, then.

«The red robes influenced the others. Anyone who did not submit to the dictates of the Democratic Magistrates also suffered negative consequences from the CSM”.

He died as a suspect for the mafia massacres of 1993.

“I always told him and Dell’Utri that I didn’t understand why they took all this mud, without claiming to have been victims of the mafia, from the attempted kidnapping of Pier Silvio to the fires in the Standa, from Mangano to the attacks on cell towers”.

Are there any ambiguities?

«Even if there have been concessions, they must be seen in a higher interest. Other accusations are improbable, the result of misunderstandings.

Did your personal relationships remain good even after the political breakup?

«Of course, I still remember the nights in the kitchen of the apartment in via Dell’Anima, the conversations at Villa Certosa. He introduced me to the nobility of politics. The rest are minor party squabbles. It’s not the day to talk about it.”

His main human trait?

“Generosity and humanity. When Leccisi fell ill, every evening, despite his commitments, he came to see him in the hospital.’

Will Forza Italia still exist as an autonomous party?

«He never considered it a party. A political culture will remain, conveyed by its televisions, where even the communists have always had a voice».

The hated communists.

“But it’s not true that he hated them.”

What will change in the center right?

“The old agreements no longer apply.”

Does Berlusconi have political heirs?

“No. The character is unique, has no substitutes. But the voids in politics fill up.”

As?

“There will be a reshuffling. I would look to Renzi and Calenda, after breaking ranks ».

Who can earn more, Salvini or Meloni?

“If I look at history, the osmotic process seems more probable to me with the League.”

Can Tajani lead what remains of Berlusconi?

«Excellent person, but the charisma?».