Paolo Borsellino murdered and then forgotten in Italy

19 July, marks a somber and disturbing anniversary for Italy. It was on this day in 1992 that an anti-mafia prosecutor from Palermo, Sicily was blown up by a car bomb planted by the Cosa Nostra mafia clan, while he went to visit his mother. His name was Paolo Borsellino and he was one of two of the most famous and well-known Italian magistrates who was battling the scourge of the Mafia clan Cosa Nostra in Sicily during the 1980s and early 1990s. Like is often the case in contemporary Italian history, the killing of Paolo Borsellino and his close friend Giovanni Falcone just two months earlier, were killed for their efforts to challenge the status quo and help make Italy a better place to live. Contemporary Italian history has revealed that while more honest and noble men are assassinated like Aldo Moro, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the more immoral and contemptible members of Italian society like Silvio Berlusconi and Marcello Dell’Utri with links to the mafia rise to power.

Not to take away any credit or praise from the scores of other innocent Italian citizens who stood up to the mafia in Sicily or the scores of police and judges killed by the mafia, the killing of Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone highlight the true evil and dark facet of Italian politics in Italy. The sheer magnitude of the corruption and collusion of the mafia with the political leaders in Italy was demonstrated when both of its best-known citizens fighting the mafia were killed. The state failed to protect its own servants trying to bring the rule of law and justice to the people of Sicily.

Since the time of the killings of Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone, the power of the Mafia has grown ever more powerful and the progress that both of these men made against the mafia has been reversed. It is now estimated that the mafia clans of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the Naples Gomorrah, and the Calabria area Ndrangheta have a combined net income of 70 billion euros last year, producing a 54 percent profit margin. According to Rome-based research institute Eurispes, Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company, had a profit of about half that at $45.2 billion.

As Alexander Stille skillfully explains in his book Excellent Cadavers, The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, at the same time the mafia was being pressured in Sicily, the political corruption so rampant in Italian politics was bringing down the entire political class. Just a few days before the assassination of Paolo Borsellino, the Foreign Minister, Giovanni De Michelis a member of the Christian Democratic Party, was found to have skimmed a percentage of the humanitarian aid that Italy was distributing to the Third World.

This only highlights why the UN agencies located in Rome should be relocated to an African country due to all the corruption in Italy. Perhaps fitting, on the day the Foreign Minister was indicted, the American ambassador Peter Secchia was co-hosting a going away party for the Italian Foreign Minister, Giovanni De Michelis, which was planned weeks earlier. While the American ambassador was heading back to Washington, it appeared his Italian counterpart would be heading to jail. This was a major embarrassment for the United States but is also symbolized the warm embrace American leaders gave to people like De Michelis, while undermining people like Aldo Moro.

Instead of showing fortitude and resolve against the Mafia, the Italian political class and most Italians have opted instead for collusion and spineless behavior towards fighting the power of the mafia. One only has to look at the killings of Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone to see this is evident. The state and its servants like the macho acting Carabinieri forces are all but a joke and are not taken seriously by the Mafia.

If Silvio Berlusconi were truly a man who cared for Italy, than he would deploy all his power and authority to battle and defeat the mafia. However, with the entire island of Sicily and the entire southern region of Italy voting for his political party, there does not seem much chance of this happening.