Italy has the least efficient justice system in Europe

Some men like Barack Obama and George W. Bush enter politics to pursue power and prestige, in Italy however, Silvio Berlusconi entered politics to protect his financial and Media Empire from being regulated and dismantled. As he has done his entire time in office, Silvio Berlusconi has enacted laws to protect his own interests first and the interests of his supporters and friends. Some of the more malevolent and self-indulgent legislation Silvio Berlusconi has passed include watering down and weakening the strong anti-Mafia legislation passed in the wake of the killing of the prominent anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino and the repeated attempts to give himself immunity from criminal prosecution, effectively elevating himself above the law. So when it was recently announced that Silvio Berlusconi and his government was going to address some of the problems with the Italian judiciary system, it is obvious to anyone who has followed his time in power that his intentions were not fortuitous. Rather, the sudden interest by his government to reform the least efficient justice system in Europe was not inspired by the noble intentions of a public servant, but rather a private citizen using his control of a government to continue to serve his own interests at the expense of the weakening one of the most important institutions in a democracy.

There is no question the justice system in Italy needs attention. According to the World Bank, Italy has the least efficient justice system in Europe and one of the slowest judiciary systems in the world. This is not due to politically zealous judges, as Berlusconi always likes to say, but rather due to the decades long influence of the mafia on the Italian state and Italian politicians passing laws that benefit themselves such as allowing convicted criminals serving in the Parliament and remaining in Parliament to avoid criminal prosecution. These factors have weakened one of the most important institutions in a healthy democracy and have resulted in Italy being ranked as the 156th least efficient country in the world out of 181 countries.

Although most of the international press is reporting on the recent story of Berlusconi wanting to reform the judicial system in Italy, and how the issue is related to the recent decision of the Italian Supreme Court to over turn a law passed by the Berlusconi government giving him legal immunity while in office, not one international news agency has spoken about the political activism of Beppe Grillo and how it is related to the recent legal issues of Don Berlusconi. In addition to failing to report on the amount of convicted people still serving in the Italian Parliament or members of Parliament facing criminal charges, the international press is failing to discuss how Beppe Grillo and his efforts at organizing V1 day in 2007, tried to address the issue of people under investigation and indictment from serving in government and has spoken about this since 2005 on his blog.

With over 300,000 people attending the political rally in Bologna Italy on 7 September 2007, Beppe Grillo was able to gather over 300,000 signatures requesting the government hold a national referendum. In addition to barring people from serving in government who are convicted criminals, the people who signed the petition also wanted to impose term limits on politicians serving in office, and requesting that citizens be allowed to select their own candidates as opposed to having the political party selecting people who it wanted to be in Parliament. However, since depositing those signatures of Italian citizens to the Parliament on 15 December 2007, the Italian government has not acted on any of the three issues the supporters of the referendum requested.

Like any intelligent person, Beppe Grillo and his supporters who signed the petition realized that allowing members of Parliament who have been or were facing criminal charges is not only ethically wrong, but that it would present too much of a temptation for these politicians to pass laws that would benefit themselves. As Berlusconi is proving, the temptation is indeed too great.

For a man ever increasingly concerned about his legacy in Italian history, this latest action by Silvio Berlusconi will only solidify his legacy as an enemy of democracy.