Legitimate Suspicions? Berlusconi and the Judges

The relationship in the course of 2002 between Silvio Berlusconi’s government and the judges was one of continued and unrelenting conflict. Few days passed wherein justice was not a central news item. Accounts of battles between the government and the judiciary carried titles such as “the duel,” and offered complex descriptions of the moves and countermoves, in both Parliament and the courts, involving the government, the opposition, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and the accused. Cases of political, administrative, and business corruption still came to light from different parts of the country, such as Turin, Milan, Potenza, Salerno, and Agrigento. But the heady days of Tangentopoli were long over: it was now the judges who were themselves under attack. For most of the year, Berlusconi and his associates cast themselves in the role of victims by arguing that they were being prosecuted and tried by politically and personally biased judges. The judiciary was made the object of co-ordinated mass media campaigns that set out in particular to discredit the Milan court and more generally to show that when judges’ actions were effective, they were often illegitimate, and that when they were legitimate, they were usually not effective. Although some of the printed media still gave unswerving support to the judges, there was little doubt that the initiative had passed to the government and its parliamentary majority.