The Milan and Palermo investigations, a new round of investigations between the judiciary and politics.

Investigations and protests
The right is hesitant to attack Sala. The left is divided on his defense. And then comes the slap in the face in Palermo. And in the background, the referendum.

"This investigation seems like a model of judicial substitution for politics," a prominent member of the Democratic Party minority mused aloud. His impression, whether well-founded or not, is that the judiciary was moved more by its assessment of the city council's political and urban planning choices than by the emergence of evidence of actual wrongdoing. At the same time, the entire government and the center-right are protesting more vociferously than ever against the Palermo prosecutor's appeal —that is, directly to the Supreme Court of Cassation and not on appeal— against Salvini 's acquittal in the Open Arms case.
From Giorgia on down, everyone is furious, rallying around the former Interior Minister, and in some cases—for example, Nordio —threatening legislative intervention to obstruct the possibility of appealing in the event of an acquittal: "No appeals against acquittals, as in all civilized countries. Otherwise, it will end up like Garlasco. The slowness of justice also depends on this. We will remedy this." Specifically, assessing the appeal will be the task of the Supreme Court of Cassation. But whatever the final verdict, it should be noted that in this case, just as in the Milan investigation, in the opinion of those who support the innocence of the case, like the reformist leader in question, any potential encroachment on the judicial front is no longer seen as a ploy by politicized magistrates to cripple some politician from the opposing side. Or at least not only and not primarily. The focus is on specific political choices that are not shared and therefore must be challenged, legally in hand.
Such "political" opposition, which of course doesn't necessarily rule out the actual presence of criminal elements, creates a dissymmetry between governing and opposition parties, regardless of the magistrates' political affiliations, simply because it is the government, not the opposition, that determines national political decisions. From this perspective, Elly Schlein was caught off guard by the Milan investigation. She sided with Mayor Sala, while confirming her full faith in the judiciary, a choice that must have cost her, given that her allies, the Five Star Movement, are the party most vocally calling for Sala's resignation. Not that Sala's resignation wasn't also called for by the League and the FdI itself, but not by Forza Italia, with the hypocritical claim that "you always provide guarantees, but the council is no longer adequate ." Then, in a decidedly clever move, the prime minister turned the tables by openly opposing the resignation: " I have never been convinced that a notice of investigation automatically leads to resignation." This is a formal declaration when applied to a member of one's own party, but it is resoundingly unusual when applied to a rival bigwig.
Of course, Giorgia knows perfectly well that the political impact of the Milan investigation is guaranteed, and her words will benefit her image without having to pay any price. But perhaps the most important consideration is that the Sala case , and the Democratic Party's inevitable defense of the mayor, will play in her favor in the referendum on justice , the truly crucial step in the legislative session leading up to the general elections. The Salvini case is different and much more serious. If the Supreme Court upholds the appeal, it will not be a matter of holding a new trial but of determining how much time the League leader and deputy prime minister will have to serve in prison. Although everyone on the right is confident and confident about the verdict, the barrage of furious reactions reveals the fear of a sentence that would inevitably trigger a real earthquake.
It's not at all certain, however, that this potential earthquake, nor even the threat posed by the appeal, will be politically to the opposition's advantage. The prime minister is playing on home soil: immigration is the primary fuel for the right everywhere in the West . An appeal against an opposition ruling, no matter how legally sound it may be, can easily be passed off as evidence of persecution, and indeed, that's exactly how all the ministers and center-right leaders who spoke out in defense of the acquitted man described it yesterday. Similar in some respects, very different in others, the two cases that have exploded in recent days pull in the same direction: to make the referendum, regardless of the actual content of the reform, the final showdown in the eternal battle between the right and the judiciary.
l'Unità