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.
