“On my part there has been no omission or reticence: I have not lied to Parliament or to the magistrates and I have not even lied about my friendship with Antonio Ligresti. And there was no unusual zeal” on the story of Giulia Ligresti's detention. The Minister of Justice, Annamaria Cancellieri, said this in the chamber in the Chamber.
In the early afternoon, the deputies will vote on the no-confidence motion presented against the Minister of Justice by the 5 Star Movement for suspicions related to some telephone calls between the Chancellors and some members of the Ligresti family. Several voices of the Democratic Party would have liked a step back by the minister (above all Renzi and Civati), but the rift returned after Prime Minister Enrico Letta warned yesterday: distrusting the Minister of Justice means distrusting the Government.
“On some passages of the intercepted conversations – added Cancellieri – it has come to build unacceptable conjectures. All of this is absolutely false. Giulia Ligresti's situation was already known to both the Turin judiciary and the prison administration before my phone call. There was no anomalous timeliness, least of all generated by my intervention as overshadowed by someone, but an ordinary prevention activity that developed in an absolutely autonomous way, as demonstrated by the temporal scansion of events. Everything that is disputed about me is contradicted by the facts".
The minister forcefully rejected “the automatism according to which this friendship relationship” with the Ligrestis “would have resulted in favoritism or abuse connected to my role, the facts show the opposite. I trust that Parliament wants to confirm its trust in me ”, concluded Cancellieri, confirming that he has “always had the support” of Letta in recent days.
“We expected it – Andrea Colletti, M5S deputy in the Justice commission, said to Rai microphones this morning, commenting on the choice of the Democratic Party not to vote on the no-confidence motion -. Unfortunately we are still on the subject of realpolitik. The truth is that even the other majority MPs are so afraid that voting on a no-confidence motion will mean a government reshuffle or crisis that they don't vote for it, even if they think it's not right: it's extremely serious, at least politically. In which other country does it happen that a Minister of Justice has such friendly relations with a family of offenders?”.
