The tsarina Bartolozzi, from Gela to the 'true leadership of the Ministry of Justice': the ascent without votes of the dissenting magistrate

Game over. The "tsarina" Giusi Bartolozzi is forced to step down. At the explicit request of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. She resisted every attack, but the outcome of the referendum - combined with her outbursts against the judiciary - this time imposed a stop to the chief of staff of Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, who tried to defend her until the last moment, as he has done in recent months.

Thus the very Sicilian magistrate on leave interrupts, perhaps only temporarily, a dazzling rise, which began with her meeting with Silvio Berlusconi and reached the top of one of the most important ministries. So much so that she became one of the opposition's favorite targets. "Mr. Minister - attacked last summer Matteo Renzi from the opposition benches - if you really want to be consistent with the separation of careers, start separating the careers of politics from that of the judiciary and separate your career from that of your chief of staff who is the real leader of your ministry." 

Bartolozzi was born and raised in Gela, a city with which she continues to maintain a direct connection and of which she proudly claims her belonging. In the last referendum campaign, she ignited the debate with her now-famous intervention against the judiciary on Telecolor - "Vote yes, so we can get rid of them, they are execution squads" - but her interventions on local Gela networks were not lacking either. During the 2018 local elections, as a member of parliament for Forza Italia, she shuffled the cards of the center-right, supporting the Lega candidate Giuseppe Spata, who was later defeated in the runoff by Lucio Greco, launched by a coalition that saw Pd and Forza Italia together, which Bartolozzi herself defined as "a Sicilian-style deal". An accusation that infuriated her party colleagues, first and foremost Michele Mancuso, the blue regional deputy with full powers of the party in the province of Caltanissetta and now under house arrest on charges of corruption. 

In the city marked by the presence of Eni, Bartolozzi has also been a civil and criminal judge since 2002. She became a member of the Judicial Council of the Court of Appeal in Caltanissetta and president of the Committee for Equal Opportunities. In 2009, she was transferred to Palermo with the functions of criminal and civil judge, until 2013 when she won a competition for the Court of Appeal of Rome with similar functions.

Her political career begins thanks to her husband Gaetano Armao, a lawyer and politician, advisor to Raffaele Lombardo first and Nello Musumeci later, now a consultant to Governor Renato Schifani and president of the regional technical scientific committee through which all environmental authorizations pass. A power couple, in short. And it is precisely thanks to her husband that Bartolozzi is struck on the road to Silvio Berlusconi. Or perhaps it is better to say the opposite: the Knight personally chooses her as a candidate for the 2018 elections and grants her a safe seat, leading candidate for Forza Italia in the proportional representation in Agrigento and in third place in the Palermo 2 constituency. In the government speculation of that phase, she is even included among the potential candidates for the position of Minister of Justice in the event of a center-right victory. Instead, it is the 5 Star Movement and the League that win, which will give rise to the brief experiment of the yellow-green executive. Bartolozzi is among the few in Sicily who survives the pentastellata tide, becoming a deputy and a member of the regional Anti-Mafia commission. The ascent of one of the most powerful couples in Sicilian politics, the more mischievous whisper, has occurred without ever really facing an election based on preferences.

As a parliamentarian, she experiences the years of Covid without failing to provide presence and support to her Gela and the territory she represents. She is very tough on the introduction of the citizenship income, enacted just before the 2019 European elections: "A disgrace, if not a crime, it is vote trading like the mafiosi," she thunders. She confirms her dissident status when she is among the five Forza Italia deputies who vote in favor of the law against homotransphobia and misogyny. The magistrate on leave had also presented a bill in this regard, which later merged into the unified text of Alessandro Zan (Pd). "I proudly announce my favorable vote - she said on that occasion - we recognize the equality of all, including those with a different sexual orientation." But once again, it is the justice front where Bartolozzi fights the hardest. In 2021, in contrast to her party's positions on the reform of the criminal process, she leaves Forza Italia and joins the Mixed group.

With the Meloni government, finally, Minister Nordio first chooses her as Deputy Chief of Staff, then places her at the head of his offices. The rest is recent news: the conflicts with many department heads and the involvement in the release of the Libyan criminal Almasri, sent back to Libya, a case in which she is the only one under investigation (the others escaped thanks to parliamentary immunity). In recent weeks, the presidency office of Montecitorio was supposed to raise a conflict of attribution before the Constitutional Court against the Court of Ministers and the prosecutor of Rome, Francesco Lo Voi. The goal is to extend parliamentary immunity to Bartolozzi as well. But there wasn't enough time.