After four years of video messages and statements via Facebook, Giorgia Meloni returns to Palermo on the anniversary day of the Via D’Amelio massacre, in which Paolo Borsellino, magistrate-icon of the Italian right, died. The last time that the leader of the Brothers of Italy came to participate in the traditional torchlight procession organized by the heirs of the Italian Social Movement (a party with which Borsellino sympathized in his youth) was in 2019, when she asked for a parliamentary commission of inquiry to thin out « the too many omissions and scandalous shadows» on the attack which also killed five escort agents: Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina and Claudio Traina.
Today is the first time as premier, but he will not participate in the party appointment scheduled for the evening, limiting himself to a morning episode. The official motivation are other commitments, the one leaked (but denied by Palazzo Chigi) are reasons “of public order” for fear of possible disputes. In reality it is not usual for a Prime Minister to participate in commemorations of such significant events, and therefore Meloni’s presence will be limited to two institutional appointments: the placing of a wreath at the barracks of the Stock Department and, after a stop on the tombs of Falcone and Borsellino, a provincial committee for public order and safety in the prefecture, in the company of the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi and the police chief Vittorio Pisani, as well as the local authorities.
Until a few days ago, the presence of the prime minister in Palermo was not foreseen, but the very recent controversies involving the government and the majority after the untimely declarations of the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio on the crime of external competition in a mafia association, convinced her and his staff to change plans to erase – at least in intentions – any doubts about the will of the executive not to back down in the fight against organized crime. This is what Meloni will reiterate today in the Committee, and which he has already underlined by announcing a forthcoming decree law to prevent a recent sentence by the Court of Cassation from putting at risk investigations and trials for crimes that have to do with the mafia, Camorra, ‘Ndrangheta and similar groups. An intervention well seen by the same anti-mafia magistrates who in recent days have defended the “legal construction” of the external competition in the mafia association contested by Nordio, as did the Palermo prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia answering a specific question from the president Chiara Colosimo, member of the Brothers of Italy who will instead participate in the torchlight vigil.
After all, between today and Friday Palermo will be the destination of many post-missini exponents who (even more than in the past, after the conquest of Palazzo Chigi) intend to reclaim Borsellino’s legacy. At least on a par with the “red agenda” movement led by the magistrate’s brother, Salvatore Borsellino, which instead has always been and continues to be hostile towards those who have been and continue to be allies of Forza Italia, the party founded by Silvio Berlusconi and Marcello Dell’Utri, the latter already condemned precisely for external competition in a mafia association and still under investigation (like Berlusconi before his death, after repeated filings) for participation in the mafia massacres of 1993.
The “red agendas”, together with the CGIL and other left-wing acronyms, will animate another procession in the afternoon that will arrive in via D’Amelio – where Elly Schlein will also be the secretary of the Democratic Party – under the banner of the slogan “Enough State – Mafia”. And Salvatore Borsellino has announced (nonviolent) protests against any “vultures and hypocrites who bring bogus crowns and honors”. The rest of the Borsellino family has not participated in public commemorations for years, limiting themselves to an afternoon mass celebrated by a priest friend. The lawyer Fabio Trizzino, husband of Lucia Borsellino, the magistrate’s eldest daughter, will be in Caltanissetta where the sentence of the appeal process against Matteo Messina Denaro is awaited, sentenced in the first instance to life imprisonment for the massacres of Capaci and via D’Amelio . «It is not a lack of respect – explains the lawyer -, but we prefer to be present in places where truth and justice are still sought. A part of the judiciary in the past has contributed to muddy the waters, but subsequently another part has worked hard to unmask the misdirections. This is why we continue to have faith in institutions such as Falcone and Borsellino had, which however, in life, were hindered by those same institutions. In the political sphere but also, and perhaps above all, within the judicial order of which they belonged. And we cannot fail to remember this, thirty-one years after their deaths».