Italy "needs legality",
President Sergio Mattarella said Tuesday.
The judiciary must "try to recover efficiency" in order to
respond to this deeply-felt need said Mattarella, who stepped
down from the Constitutional Court to take office as president
of the Republic earlier this month.
Mattarella, a former minister and Constitutional Court
judge from Sicily, was elected 12th Italian president on January
31.
The Constitution tasks magistrates with a role that is
"neither a starring...nor a bureaucratic one," Mattarella said
in remarks to the school of magistrates in Scandicci, near
Florence.
"The magistrate must be just and impartial," Mattarella
said.
As well, magistrates must work quickly because "justice
must be prompt if it is to be effective," he said.
Mattarella is well on his way to conquering the hearts and
minds of recession-weary Italians with his frugal approach to
the presidency.
Eschewing privilege, the president has made a point of
traveling on public transport as much as he can.
On Tuesday, he took a high-speed train from Rome to
Florence, then rode the tram to nearby Scandicci to speak before
what will be the new crop of Italian magistrates.
He also impressed the public when he chose to take a
regular Alitalia flight to visit family in Sicily earlier this
month, instead of flying in a private plane at taxpayers'
expense.
Earlier this month, Mattarella announced the Quirinal
presidential palace will "shortly" be open to visitors every day
instead of just on Sunday mornings.
He said visits would throw open "other parts of the Palace
and use new spaces for permanent or temporary shows".
The former papal palace on top of Rome's highest hill - a
third again the size of Buckingham Palace and 20 times the size
of the White House - is itself an architectural masterpiece
filled with frescoes, tapestries, canvases, and sculptures.
True to his word, Mattarella has thrown the palace doors
open daily as of mid-February for an exhibition of 20
Renaissance tapestries, which Cosimo I de Medici commissioned to
Pontormo and Bronzino in 1545.
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