The Italian Disaster Perry Anderson Europe is ill [...] When transcripts of the exchanges between Mancino and D’Ambrosio were published in the press, together with news that tapes of the president’s own conversations wth Mancino were in the possession of the investigating magistrate, Napolitano invoked absolute immunity for his office and, Nixon-style, demanded that the tapes be destroyed. Borsellino’s brother Salvatore called for his impeachment; since an obstruction of justice was patently involved, in the United States there would have been grounds for that. In Italy such an outcome was unthinkable. The political class and media closed ranks immediately around the president, as it had done when Scalfaro used his major-domo to stifle the SISDE scandal. Napolitano’s aide, the Ehrlichman of the affair, expired of a heart attack at the height of the uproar. As so often, Marco Travaglio, arguably Europe’s greatest journalist, was the only one to call the facts by name; in his book Viva il Re!, published last year, he drew up a comprehensive indictment of Napolitano’s record in office, across six hundred pages of damning documentation. Elsewhere, in face of the danger to his position, the chorus of sycophancy around the president – whose volume had been building for some time – reached a near hysterical crescendo. bit.ly/1hLz25w
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 11:51:24 +0000
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