ABOUT THE IMPUGNED AND DENOUNCED ADMINSITRATIVE JUDGMENT AGAINST THE FTT
AN ABSURD UNIVERSITY LECTURE TO DEFEND A SCANDALOUS JUDGMENT
First published on March 21st, 2014, La Voce di Trieste, issue No. 41.
We had already mentioned that on February 27th, 2014, the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Trieste held an abnormal lecture about “Jurisdiction, sovereignty, and territory” in order to disguise as a case study what in truth is a confused apology, without even a debate, of the scandalous judgment No. 530/2013 of the Regional Administrative Court for Region Friuli Venezia Giulia (TAR FVG) against the Free Territory of Trieste.
It results that the lecture left no room for debate, and omitting to mention that the judgment is impugned before the Consiglio di Stato (Italian Council of State, the administrative Court of 2nd instance). Also, nobody mentioned that the judgment gave raise to a criminal complaint because not only it has subversively distorted the law, but threatened the appellants.
Indeed, Judgment No. 530/2013 is the very political decision that rejected the appeal of 57 citizens with which Free Trieste seeks the annulment of the regional election held simulating Italian sovereignty over the Free Territory of Trieste, which in truth is under the Italian Government’s temporary civil administration (special trusteeship).
Also, that decision consists in 65 pages of arguments against truth and law, which ends threatening the appellant with prosecution for crimes against the State, just like during the Fascist era.
Since the public political support offered by the University to the authors of the judgment is as abnormal as it is significant, we have attended and recorded the lecture, summing up the main absurdities in the following article.
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Comparative Public Law professor Roberto Scarciglia opens the lecture claiming that it is “very difficult, today, imagining law without history’s support, without economy’s support, without the support of the sciences” and calls for the release of a book. Then the official promoter of the lecture, Adminsitrative Law professor Andrea Crismani, clears the podium for his colleague Marcello Fracanzani.
Surprising admissions
However, Mr. Fracanzani clarifies that the judgment is not about Trieste’s legal status, but revolves on the elections. It doesn’t look that way. Furthermore, and this is true, he explains that this decision is not a source of law, because it didn’t declare the act impugned null and void. This means that another Administrative Court may rule differently.
Someone in the public informs him that, having been impugned, the judgment is not final. Mr. Fracanzani seems surprised that the promoters didn’t tell him, and turns the floor to the next speaker.
Philosophy of might that makes right
Philosophy of Law professor Lucio Franzese opens his speech quoting Jean Bodin (1529-1596): “sovereign is he who receives nothing from others and only depends on his own sword”. From this, he infers that the Free Territory is no State because it is demilitarized, neural, and its Governor is appointed by others. Even if we could list many States with similar characteristics.
The speaker continues praising the abominable, old “Cammarata thesis” (already demolished by jurist Francesco Capotorti) against the Free Territory, labels it as “an abortion” and continues on the similar claims of Manlio Udina.
He then claims that the Court did right charging the appellants with subversion, because according to Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) “Auctoritas, non veritas, facit legem”: authority, not truth, makes wight, and also because, according to Hans Kelsen (1881-1973) “law is a mean of social control, it aims at obtaining a desired behavior by the threat of a sanction”.
Finally, this review of philosophy of prevarication ends. The speaker thanks the public. Someone comments “it’s free, you know…” and he answers back: “to some extent”. Obviously, the extent is the lecture’s costs and cachet.
From surreal law to surreal history
Contemporary history professor Raoul Pupo, former secretary of the Christian Democracy, gives his own contribution to the surreal atmosphere claiming that the Allies were not actually in Trieste as provisional military government of the Free Territory on behalf of the UN, rather, to keep it safe from Yugoslavs and Russians on behalf of Italy, and as a temporary buffer-state. Unfortunately, all international instruments confirm the opposite.
Furthermore, according to Mr. Pupo the state had no economic self-sufficiency or a local identity to support it. In truth, it had a balanced budget, it has an international Free Port, and Trieste has its own composite but distinct identity.
Again according to professor Pupo, after the Tito – Stalin split, the Allies only wanted to partition the Free Territory as soon as possible (so did it exist, or…?) between Italy and Yugoslavia. Yet, again, the US Department of State has long disproved it.
Finally, Mr. Pupo presents the supporters of the Free Territory as selfish profiters paid by Italians, Yugoslavs, and Anglo-Americans, pays respect to the political ideas of Cammarata, of Udina, and of the Treaty of Osimo as a source of irrevocable sovereignty. Even if this the United Nations disproved it with a note.
Escape as a solution
Political and Economic Geography professor Igor Jelen, on his side, lines up dissertations about the world after the US-USSR bipolarism (sic) and about globalization. He says nothing about Courts, the Free Territory, of even about Trieste, rather, he says that democracy “accumulates waste”, and incites escape as solution to all problems: nowadays, he explains, there is no need to revolt, all it takes is going away, emigrate. So why don’t he and his fellow relators do it right away?
Law for political use
On his side, Andrea Crismani justifies the tone of this lecture claiming that the true subject are a series of “why?” about a judgment that to him represents “a very complex historical and legal roadmap”. And sketches up a dissection of it, deciding in favor of the political nature and not about the legal one: “today, if there was still a claim over Zone B, this judgment would have been written, most probably, in a different way”. Exactly.
Enters the emeritus
Here comes Emeritus international law professor Giorgio Conetti, who labels the Treaty of Peace as “obsolete, dusty, and ephemeral” as the Italian 1865 civil code. As if domestic law could amend the international legal order, or if the Italian Constitution were not as “old” as that Treaty, not to mention the primordial norms like the prohibition to murder, steal, rape, and other such things.
Professor Conetti does even try to change the rules of the game claiming that treaties don’t establish situations, if anything, they force to produce them. If so, the Treaty of Peace, which openly establishes the FTT, bounds others to respect it.
Yet, the Emeritus professor denies its very existence immediately, defining it “entity of uncertain qualification, certainly not state-like” and explains that “territories without sovereignty” exist as “trusteeship regimes, where there is no sovereignty but international responsibility”. But he is talking of ordinary trusteeships, entrusted to States, like Italian Somaliland after WWII. On the contrary, the special trusteeship mandate regarding temporary administration of the Free Territory, being it a sovereign State, entrusted to a provisional Government, first Allied and Military, then civilian and Italian.
Professor Conetti declares that the Memorandum of London was fundamental to “eliminate” the FTT and amend the Treaty of Peace, declaring that he sees no “temporary nature” in the administration. Yet, that is the legal title’s own nature.
However, the paradoxical reasoning of the Emeritus professor is perfect the moment he labels as ignorant whoever confirms the Free Territory of Trieste’s legal existence: “there are many things of which people talk without bothering to have textbook knowledge about them”… and then he mentions more documents as if he had never read any of them before, ending his lecture paying respects to Cammarata and Pupo.
Lawless environmental sociology
Sociology of Environment and Territory professor Luigi Pellizzoni wanders in conspiracy theories asking himself “what interest are behind” the people of Trieste who addressed the adminsitrative Court. He then discusses localism, the political crisis, made-up new identities, projects Cartesian plans that represent the world before and after the fall of the Berlin wall, denies that ethnicity is a relevant factor. Finally, he claims that the administrative judgment has closed the legal aspects of Question Trieste. So, either he didn’t even read it, or he is a fish out of (academic) water.
Economic counter-history
Economic history professor Daniele Andreozzi introduce himself as “very rough, very cynic, because I am all for money”. Then he attacks the claims for the port of Trieste, he calls it an unground myth like, he says, that of cosmpolite Mitteleuropa which he despises as much, because, in his opinion “it births the monsters of fascism and of nazism, it’s no coincidence that the nazis exploited the myth of the port of Trieste” (!?). He ultimately denies the importance of ports and free zones (yet those prosper all the world round) and promotes his latest book.
Uneducational education
At this point, Emeritus professor Conetti calls the lecture over, without a debate, justifying it all claiming that the core problem is not legal, rather, the fact that the praised adminsitrative judgment wants to “go beyond” law to become “maieutic” as in educational.
Not the best kind of education, if we may, considering that its main teachings, in the words of the speakers themselves, are: might makes right, a WWII Peace Treaty has no value because it is old, the Free Territory is an abortion, emigrating is better than resisting, addressing a Court is worth a punishment, and the plurinational Mitteleuropa is to blame for nazis and fascists instead of the racist nationalists that attacked it, broke it, destroyed it and Trieste along with it.
Moral of the story: a three hour long university lecture, paid with the citizen’s money, to hear things that would have been acceptable only behind a closed door or at a pub. Congratulations to all the speakers.
(SV)