At the CSM the appointment of the new Attorney General of Cassation. Mattarella present but will not intervene

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A split Supreme Council of the Judiciary, affected by the tensions of recent weeks between politics and the judiciary, will welcome the head of state Sergio Mattarella this afternoon, who will preside over the extraordinary plenum for the nomination of the new Attorney General of the Court of Cassation at 4:00 p.m. According to Il Foglio, Mattarella will not intervene, thus avoiding the risk of becoming entangled in the conflict between the government and the judiciary (even deeper after Delmastro's conviction), moreover on the eve of the strike of the ANM.

The judges who sentenced Delmastro were openly accused by Prime Minister Meloni and half the government (including the Minister of Justice) of having issued a “political sentence”, generating the “dismay” of the National Association of Magistrates: “The separation of powers was violated”. Previously, it was the sentences of various judges on immigration matters, against the detention of migrants in the center set up in Albania, that fueled tensions between the executive and the judiciary.

The frictions have moved directly inside the CSM. Just think of the proposal of the togati councilors to open a case to protect the judicial order, contesting the words expressed in Parliament by Minister Nordio in the annual report on the state of justice. Or the recent proposal of the secular center-right to open a case against the prosecutor of Rome Lo Voi, both for the investigation started against the government for the Almasri case, and for the leaking of a secret service report from the office.

In this very heated context, today's appointment for the nomination of Luigi Salvato's successor as Attorney General of the Court of Cassation takes place. One of the most important positions in the judiciary: the Attorney General of the Court of Cassation, in fact, holds, together with the Minister of Justice, the power of disciplinary action against magistrates and is a member by right of the CSM, as well as of its presidency committee.

President Mattarella will find a CSM that is not only experiencing tensions, but also divided in two. The councilors have not in fact reached unanimity on the name of the next attorney general. There are two candidates, Pietro Gaeta and Pasquale Fimiani , both currently attorneys general of the Court of Cassation. The Council should split in half: the centrist (Unicost) and left-wing (Area and Democratic Magistrates) will support Gaeta, considered close to Md, together with the laymen Ernesto Carbone (Italia Viva) and Roberto Romboli (Pd); the five center-right laymen and the laymen – not all – of Independent Magistrates (Mi) will vote in favor of the nomination of Fimiani. It will also be necessary to see how the members of the presidency committee will line up, but Gaeta will almost certainly prevail, albeit by a majority.

What is also surprising, however, is the internal split in Mi. Some moderate judges will in fact support Gaeta, despite the fact that after the Palamara scandal he conducted disciplinary proceedings against the current secretary general of Mi, Claudio Galoppi, accusing him of having promoted, together with Palamara, an amendment to the 2017 stability law that reduced the waiting times for former CSM councilors before competing for management positions. In the end, the charges were shelved.

Paradoxically, Gaeta's name ended up in Palamara's famous chats. According to a chat that emerged from the former dominus of appointments' phone, Gaeta allegedly tried to obtain - through the intermediation of a magistrate - a meeting with Palamara during the period in which he was running for promotion to attorney general of the Supreme Court. Gaeta was eventually promoted in February 2019, when Palamara was no longer at the CSM. The incident was recalled in the Fifth Commission by the lay councilor representing the League, Claudia Eccher, but it did not end up in the report that Eccher herself will illustrate in today's plenum in support of the nomination of Fimiani, whose profile is considered superior to that of Gaeta in terms of qualifications. However, it could be another lay councilor who recalls the incident, with no small amount of embarrassment for those present, especially the head of state.

In short, after six years the ghost of Palamara still hovers in the corridors of the former Palazzo dei Marescialli, now Palazzo Bachelet.

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