Mattarella's words on CSM staying out of political disputes are right says Meloni

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 19 - President Sergio Mattarella's call for institutions to respect the judiciary's self-governing body CSM after Justice Minister Carlo Nordio called it "mafia-like" amid sometimes over-heated debate over next month's judicial reform referendum is right, Premier Giorgia Meloni said Thursday. "I haven't heard from the President of the Republic in these hours," Meloni said in an interview with SkyTg24, a day after Mattarella's extraordinary call in the first prdinary meeting of the CSM he has chaired in the 11 years of his presidency, in which he is the body's titular head. "We had met the evening before, at the traditional meeting marking the anniversary of the Lateran Pacts. "I found the President's words right. I think the call for respect between institutions is right, and I think the passage in which the President of the Republic says, 'It's important for an institution like the CSM to stay out of political disputes' is right." Meloni went on to criticise alleged attempts to "drag the referendum into the mud" after Naples Chief Prosecutor Nicola Gratteri said that in the 'Ndrangheta-mafia-riddled region of Calabria, mobsters, the indicted, defendants, rogue Freemasons and shady power centres would be voting in favour of the reform, which separates the career paths of judges and prosecutors so they can no longer switch between the two. "I think it's very important that this referendum campaign stays focused on the substance of what we're talking about," Meloni said. "I see an attempt to drag it into a sort of mud fight. "It seems to me that this attempt is more of an interest to those who are having trouble attacking a reform that they have supported and proposed in the past. "I believe it certainly isn't convenient for those like us who believe we've simply implemented a common-sense reform. "It's not a right-wing or left-wing reform; this is demonstrated precisely by the fact that it has been proposed by the most diverse political parties over the years and decades." Turning her attention to recent political violence by anarchists in Italy, Meloni said Italy did not want to return to the time of the Marxist guerrilla Red Brigades. She also noted that France granted asylum to several leading BR members after a spat with French President Emmanuel Macron who accused her of meddling after she condemned the leftist thugs who beat to death rightist activist Quentin Deranque in a Lyon street at the weekend. "I see a climate I don't like—I see it in Italy, I see it in France, I see it in the United States," she said. "I also commented on the murder of Charlie Kirk when it happened, not because there's any desire to interfere in other people's affairs, but because I believe it's a reflection the ruling classes need to make on how to combat a climate that could take us back several decades, a history that Italy has experienced very well and that France, among other things, knows very well, having given political asylum to a number of Red Brigade members for several decades. "So, I mean, I didn't experience it as interference." (ANSA). Read article...

By ANSA