Dear Director Feltri,
I carefully followed the judicial affair linked to the Open Arms case, which involves Matteo Salvini, and I confess that he was stunned in knowing that the Prosecutor has decided to challenge the acquittal sentence, even resorting to the cassation, thus jumping the normal passage on appeal. I wonder: is it justice or is it fury? Is it normal to want to overturn a sentence at any cost that acquitted a former minister with full formula for simply made his duty? What idea did he do, director?
Andrea Marinoni
Dear Andrea,
Your question is simple, but what raises is very serious. Not only is it true that Matteo Salvini’s acquittal sentence in the Open Arms trial was challenged by the Palermo prosecutor’s office, but was made in an exceptional method, the so -called appeal for Saltum, or it was decided to climb over the appeal judgment and run directly to the Cassation for an immediate judgment.
A legitimate forcing, of course, but with a disturbing flavor. Because, see, we are not faced with a trivial appeal. Here is the obvious and brazen attempt to overturn a full acquittal verdict at any cost, sanctioned after a long process in which it was ascertained that the fact does not exist. Not that it is “in doubt”, or that “it is not demonstrable”: the fact does not exist. But nothing, the persecutors are not enough. They want the sentence. They demand the monster. True, the investigations also concern the left: just think of the mayor of Milan, Beppe Sala, currently investigated. But, coincidentally, when the togas move against a left exponent, the guaranteed attitude immediately starts: “We will see”, “there is nothing certain”, “has our trust”. Nobody who requests the resignation. Nobody who gets indignant. When, on the other hand, it is a man on the right, perhaps of a minister who had the daring to defend the boundaries of the state, which, I remember it, is a constitutional function, then the media, political and judicial war starts.
Salvini’s case is manual. He was massacred media and judicially for preventing a landing that could (and who had to be prevented, no crime he put in place.
However, a long, exhausting process followed, which ended with a clear acquittal. But that’s not enough. It is not good. The judiciary decided that he cannot end like this, he would have liked another ending, another epilogue, and therefore he challenged the sentence. That is: the judiciary accuses the judiciary of having made a mistake. It is as if a surgeon, after a successful intervention, was reported by a colleague because “it cannot be the patient that he is well”. We are ridiculous. This is not right. It is ideology with the toga on. It is persecution, dear Andrea. And he proclaims him with full awareness. We have already seen this movie. Berlusconi lived him on his skin. Thirty processes, twenty years of mud, interceptions, insinuations. Always him. Always and only him. Because he was right, because he was popular, because he had won. Now it’s up to Salvini. Who is guilty not of a crime, but to have consent and to have exercised a duty and a prerogative of the state as minister. Stuffly guilty of having been chosen by the Italians to do what he did: protect the boundaries.
If the principle that a motivated magistrate is sufficient to overturn the popular will is sufficient, then we are no longer in democracy. We are in togocracy. And the polls become useless. I conclude: Meloni is right when he says that the sentences must be respected, even those that fulfill, and that the state has the right and duty to safeguard the boundaries.
And he is also right in the case of the room: he must not resign, unless he feels more able to govern.
Because it is not the investigation that matters, but the principle. And the principle is one: either the law is the same for everyone, or it is a selective weapon in the hands of those who hate those who win.