Justice, the ANM attacks: referendum will be against the togas, poisoned climate
Yesterday's steering committee 'Technical reasons evaporated, only a yes or no vote to the judges'
By now the upcoming referendum will be on the judiciary, on the esteem and credibility it enjoys or may enjoy, and no longer on the technical issues covered by the constitutional reform law. The president of the ANM, Cesare Parodi, raised the tone at yesterday's central committee meeting in a speech that he emphasised was unusual even in its length. 'I have matured a very strong feeling: it will be a referendum against the judiciary,' Parodi emphasised. 'These are strong words because my observation of everyday reality, in offices, in the press, on television, among people, unfortunately leads me to this conclusion, which is exactly the opposite of what I was hoping for.
Parodi piled up episode after episode of recent news (from the attack on magistrates in Naples to the controversy over the 'children of the woods' affair) to corroborate a certainty, that of a climate entirely hostile to the judiciary. "In the next three months,' the president of the ANM continued, between the serious and the facetious, 'I expect everything, I am surprised that a personal attack has not yet arrived, but I do not have the slightest doubt that it will arrive: they will accuse me of organ trafficking, of selling sacred relics, of having brigaded to get the post of Attorney General of the Cassation. Politics will not do it, because the dirty work is done by others. We must be ready for anything'.
Some more optimistic elements, however, Parodi recalls on the front of the effectiveness of the judiciary's arguments even in apparently distant worlds, such as that of lawyers, especially civil lawyers.
And Anm secretary Rocco Maruotti relaunches: 'A latest survey records a 6-point difference and in our opinion it is very significant because, just over a month after the approval of the reform, the gap has almost halved. This evidently triggered the decision of the Council of Ministers to arrive at a date in the next few days to bring forward the vote between the end of February and the beginning of March'.
And so 'what worries us is that the absence of debate in Parliament will now be followed, if that is the case, by an absence of debate in the country,' Maruotti continued. 'If the citizens are not adequately informed on such a technical and complicated issue, the risk is that they will not go to the polls and thus the Constitution will be amended by a minority of citizens.
