This is why Giorgia Meloni does not withdraw the lawsuit against Roberto Saviano

Interviewed by Corriere della Sera, the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has declared that she will not give discounts to Roberto Saviano in the defamation trial whose next hearing will be on December 12th. The writer had been postponed to trial on November 5, 2021, after the denunciation of Giorgia Meloni, whom she had seen defined as a “bastard” by the writer during an episode of A clean sweep on La7, in December 2020. Roberto Saviano had said: «All the junk said about the NGOs will have come back to your mind: “taxi del mare”, “cruises” … it just comes to say bastards. To Meloni, to Salvinibastards, how could you? How was it possible to describe all this pain like this? It is legitimate to have a political opinion but not on the emergency”.

To the director Luciano Fontana who asked him if he intended to withdraw the lawsuit against Saviano, as his lawyer had vented at the first hearing of the trial, on November 15, the leader of the Brothers of Italy and prime minister denied, explaining: «No, I don’t think to do it. I filed the lawsuit when I was leader of the opposition. I did it not because Saviano had criticized me on immigration but because, in a shameful attempt to hold me responsible for a child’s death at sea, he called me a “bastard” on prime time TV. And when he was asked if that word was not far from the right to criticize, he reiterated the concept ». In December 2020, in fact, Meloni was a deputy, leader of the Brothers of Italy, in opposition to the Conte Bis government, which creaked, together with Matteo Salvini’s League.

Roberto Saviano, interviewed by Tomorrow – newspaper also sued by Meloni for defamation for an article by Emiliano Fittipaldi “which had not given an opinion on Meloni, but only reported a fact taken from a report” as Nello Trocchia wrote – argued that the lawsuit should be withdrawn, because freedom of opinion must be defended. «The danger lies in the disproportion between the plaintiff and the defendant, and in the very nature of the crime for which we will be judged, which is a crime of opinion,” he said. «This political majority intends to lead us towards what Eduardo Galeano baptized “democratura”: a democracy that claims to belong to democratic values, but which in fact acts in an illiberal way, lashing out against its most exposed figures with complaints and personal attacks . Only the voiceless person is left with a comfortable freedom of criticism, but for those who have a megaphone, a stage, space, in a “democratic” life is made difficult».

Giorgia Meloni, in dialogue with Fontana, however added that withdrawing the lawsuit would mean, having been a deputy at the time and not the prime minister, “believing that the judiciary will have a different behavior based on my role, or that citizens are not all equal before the law. To then conclude: «I believe that everything will be treated with impartiality, given the separation of powers. But I also think that a certain left shouldn’t consider itself above the law.”

We recall that the crime of aggravated defamation – in this case by the fact that the defamation allegedly took place on a television talk show – is punished with imprisonment from six months to three years or a fine of no less than 516 euros. However, in practice, the penalty is rarely enforced and is often suspended.\