CSM election: Ferri returns, but the independents win

Sometimes they come back. It would be unfair to label the elections to renew the judiciary of the High Council of the Judiciary as the resurrection of Cosimo Ferri – who, twenty years on from his previous stint and, above all, after having been a key figure in the ‘Hotel Champagne’ affair, is returning to the Council, albeit thanks to the intricacies of the proportional representation system. He secured 258 votes in a victory with a distinctly revanchist flavour.

And yet other figures are even more telling and bear witness to of a judiciary which, following the referendum, has not abandoned its drive for renewal. A clear litmus test of this drive is the real surprise of the election, which saw an extremely high turnout: around 90 per cent of the magistrates – 8,507 in total – cast their votes: the lists of Autogoverno Diffuso, driven in part by the support of Magistratura Democratica and born out of the pioneering work of Roberto Fontana’s outgoing council term, started from (almost) scratch and secured four councillors out of a total of 20, with a total of 5,278 votes. Among the key points of the programme, for example, is the limitation of discretionary powers in decisions regarding the leadership of judicial offices, in line with the ANM assembly convened spontaneously during the turbulent days following the referendum.

The success of the progressive lists is confirmed by the result achieved by Area, which retains its current six seats, whilst Magistratura Indipendente, despite securing the highest overall number of votes, has seen its number of councillors almost halved, falling from seven to four. This outcome was also fuelled by internal tensions within a faction led by ANM President Giuseppe Tango; these frictions led to the submission of external candidacies alongside the official ones, but which, in effect, ‘drew’ from the same electoral pool, eroding the margin of support. Salvatore Casciaro, former ANM secretary, suffered a symbolic defeat in the single national constituency for the two seats allocated to the Court of Cassation, losing by a margin of just six votes.

Unicost remains stable, retaining its four councillors whilst seeing the fruits of a long-standing process of renewal – in terms of both personnel and programmes – which has seen the ‘centrists’ increasingly aligned with the progressive groups within this CSM. A prime example of this was the request, on Thursday 29 October, to open proceedings to defend the Milan investigating judge, who was heavily criticised by the Government for failing to confirm the detention of Youssef Siher, was signed by all the judges on the Council except those from MI.