Dear Minister Carlo Nordio and dear Ministers of the Meloni government, it was in 1748 that Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède, and Montesquieu, perhaps known to you simply as Montesquieu, in a work that will remain the foundation of democratic modernity, explained how the judiciary power should be separated from all other powers to guarantee the political freedom of citizens.
Nordio’s words against the judges of Rome, who are guilty of having applied the rules and sentences of the EU Court of Justice origin and of not having validated the detention of migrants forcibly deported to Albania, must be read together with the street demonstration organized in Palermo by ministers and deputies of the Lega party to protest against the trial in which Matteo Salvini is accused of various crimes during his time as Minister of the Interior. When power raises its voice against the judges and their choices, it simply and consciously wants to break that balance between powers on which the democratic constitutional pact is based.
Montesquieu, even without knowing he was a baron is part of our common philosophical, legal and democratic history.
“If the judiciary steps out of line, we must intervene”, threatened the Minister of Justice [Nordio], thus heralding a change in the law that would nail magistrates to a notarial role. Dear Minister, the only chance left to the Power to silence judges is to break that democratic pact based on the strict separation of powers. Judgments can be legitimately criticised, however, especially if one is a distinguished jurist, by indicating the correct interpretative solution. When you announce a change in the law, you are admitting that the judges’ choice was the only possible way, in the name of domestic and international law and in the name of those human rights that are now reduced to waste paper, in immigration detention centres and prisons.
The little “Pontida” [a political festival where all the far-right voters of the Lega party reunite] organized in Palermo is also completely out of scale and out of place. It aims to raise tension and make the fair exercise of jurisdiction hard for those who know that, if they ever decide to convict Matteo Salvini of kidnapping, at best, they will have to live under escort, like that Prosecutor who demanded his conviction. The rule of law is at risk.
To these two pieces is added the third, consisting of the forthcoming approval of the security bill that criminalises any form of dissent or peaceful protest, on the street, in prisons or in immigration detention centres. Beware, Orban is already here and has taken the form that everyone can easily recognise, including those who improperly call themselves “liberals”.
