Italy: Berlusconi intensifies his attacks on the judiciary

[Aidoneus]

Italy: Berlusconi intensifies his attacks on the judiciary
By Peter Schwarz
19 September 2003

At the beginning of this month, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi once again hit the headlines with an onslaught against the judiciary. In an interview with the right-wing British magazine the Spectator during his recent holiday in Sardinia, the current chairman of the European Union (EU) council declared: “These judges are mad twice over. First because they are politically that way, and second because they are mad anyway. To do that job you need to be mentally disturbed, anthropologically different from the rest of humanity.”

Berlusconi was referring to the legal actions against Giulio Andreotti, the seven-times Christian Democrat prime minister and lifelong senator, who had close links to the Mafia, as a court in Palermo confirmed this summer. But Berlusconi’s latest remarks fit seamlessly into the vendetta waged for years by the richest man in Italy against judges and public prosecutors, whom he declaims alternatively as “red robes” or communists in disguise.

Berlusconi is pursuing two aims with his campaign against the judiciary. In the first place, he is seeking to protect himself and his company empire Fininvest against legal investigations. The multibillionaire has been the subject of over a dozen trials on charges of fiddling the books, tax evasion or bribery, and he has only been able to avoid sentencing through appeals or last-minute changes to the law. In three cases, he was actually sentenced to a total of six years in prison by lower courts, only to have their decisions overturned. Second, he is seeking to annul the existing division of state power and evade any sort of judicial control over the increasingly arbitrary activities of his government by intimidating and muzzling judges.

Only this summer, and in great haste, the right-wing parliamentary majority passed an immunity law tailored entirely to the requirements of the head of government when it became clear that a court in Milan was preparing to sentence him for the bribery of judges. With the judges’ hands tied, Berlusconi then went on the offensive and appointed a parliamentary commission to investigate whether, according to party speaker Sandro Bondi, there is among judges and state prosecutors a “criminal conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the democratic institutions of Italy.” At the same time, the Justice Ministry initiated investigations into an abuse of office by the two prosecutors in the trial against Berlusconi.

Judges in Milan certified that Berlusconi’s Fininvest concern was guilty of corruption that was “without parallel in Italian history and perhaps in the entire world.” These words are recorded in the reasons for judgement in another trial, in which Berlusconi’s closest associate, Cesare Previti, was sentenced to 11 years in jail by the lower court. According to the judges, Previti and his co-workers had “elevated corruption to a way of life.”

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/berl-s19.shtml

[joeybee12]

1. I'm going to Rome on Monday--I'll bitch-slap Berlusconi for you!

He's ALMOST as bad as Dumbo!