Referendum, Nordio: 'If the No vote wins, extreme judiciary wing mortgages politics'

"With a 'yes' vote, things would change for the better with the judiciary," but "if the 'no' vote were to win, it would be a victory for the extreme wing of the judiciary, which would mortgage politics. Thus Justice Minister Carlo Nordio to the Ansa Forum. "Should a 'no' vote win, I fear," Nordio continued, "that by politicising the referendum also through the very strong intervention of the judiciary, and as I fear it will continue to do, politics in general would be defeated. The judiciary, on the strength of a victory to which it has conferred a strong political significance, would feel empowered to continue the mortgage on politics'.

"In this debate," said Nordio, "everyone has their testimonials, all respectable. In the content I would like to know from where they draw the conclusion that we want to limit the autonomy of the judiciary or subject it to executive power'. "We have elevated the public prosecutor to the same level as the judge, in terms of independence and autonomy," the Guardasigilli emphasised, adding: "For now no one can in good faith claim that something like that can be extrapolated from this text."

With regard to mandatory prosecution, the minister said, "there is a lack of homogeneity from prosecutor's office to prosecutor's office on the priority of crimes to be prosecuted: Prosecutor X gives it to crimes against women, another to white-collar crime, a third to the environment. Each one does what it likes. We have to find a criterion so that all prosecutors' offices have a uniform guideline on the priority of investigations to be carried out'. Nordio emphasised that with the reform contained in the referendum 'the mandatory nature of criminal prosecution is not touched. We will try,' he added, 'with dialogue to find a binding criterion for all prosecutors' offices on priorities. I say to the magistrates 'let's get around a table'"

The security decree approved on 5 February has not yet been published in the Official Gazette. "It is in the process of being stamped, but I rule out any difficulties," Nordio assured us. "Sometimes days pass because the stamping is a complex procedure, for me even outdated".

"The criminal shield," concluded Nordio, "does not exist, it is a journalistic invention, there is no impunity"; the regulation contained in the security decree "concerns not only the police force but everyone and provides that those in a state of justification do not have to be entered in the register of suspects in order to be able to defend themselves". Referring to the Rogoredo incident, with the officer who shot and killed a person during an anti-drug control, the minister clarified: 'If that policeman shot without being in an obvious state of self-defence, I too would have entered him in the register of suspects. The information guarantee,' Nordio lamented, 'has become an information guarantee and the name of the suspect immediately ends up in the newspapers. When there is a cause for justification, which for example for a policeman can be self-defence, there is no obligation to enter him in the register of suspects