More than thirty years have passed and we are still here, to deal with what, paraphrasing De Gasperi, we could call the «fourth party», that of the judiciary which, at every junction, expresses itself, upsets the plans of both: in any case it shapes the body of the Republic.
Symbolically the day of 18 February was the apotheosis of the triumph of the "fourth party": the vote in the Rousseau platform on Diciotti case, which split the main player in the government coalition (and now we will see in the real vote, that of the classroom). E, in the meantime, the arrest of Renzi's parents, that is, of the one who was about to re-enter the scene, assuming he ever got out of it, both in the PD primaries and in the more general picture.
Because we have reduced ourselves like this, that is, how we let the judiciary dictate the political agenda? There are many causes but there is above all one culprit: the political class. The judiciary, Indeed, it is a power that has allowed itself to expand and a law of politics dictates that, once he grows up, no power tends to return to its place, unless someone forces it.
Because the political class failed to do so?
For at least three reasons; a cultural deviance, a political misreading and an international trend. Politics could have intervened on the first two causes, and maybe, also on the third. Let's see them.
1. Cultural deviance. Decades if not centuries of partisan division of the country have ensured that Giovanni Giolitti's rule has always prevailed: «the law is interpreted for friends and applies to enemies». That is to say, when the judiciary targets your political opponents, you become justicialists, while you transform yourself into a guarantor and even harsh critic of the judges, when your friends get hit. The declarations of Renzi and the Renzians of these hours are textbook: the same ones who in the previous days shouted "honesty, honesty" in the squares and called for Salvini to be pilloried.
2. Political mistake. For understandable historical reasons (the alliance between the communists and the judges' party since the 1980s) the one who most thoroughly tried to resolve the judiciary issue, Silvio Berlusconi, he made a double mistake: primo, believe that the worm of the judiciary was harboring in its populous "red" component. While in reality what moves the fourth party is not so much or only ideology but precisely the desire for corporate hegemony. Second mistake: in defending against attacks, the Cav developed a strategy of ad personam laws which however ended up weakening, if not delegitimize, his action.
3. International trend. The power of judges and their objective, to now determine not only the political agenda but also the government agenda (the Diciotti case is a qualitative leap in this sense) It's part of an international trend, which sees technocratic classes and bureaucracies, national and international, not only to become autonomous from political power, but also end up dominating it. Everywhere in Europe every government must now pass under the gauntlet of non-elective powers, from those of the EU Commission to the ruling of the European Court of Justice to those of the individual national prosecutors. The judicial Republic and the one dominated by "Europeanist" techno-bureaucracies are more sisters than it seems at first glance.

But no country is burdened like Italy by a power of judges so extensive, stubborn and decisive, and for such a long time. To save themselves, the entire political class, beyond the divisions between majority and opposition, should sign a great pact that radically reforms justice. It has never been attempted, and today it seems really difficult: but someone should try.
Marco Gervasoni, 19 February 2019