Rita Borsellino stands up in Sicily

The sister of the heroic anti-mafia magistrate Paolo Borsellino will stand as a centre-left candidate in next year’s elections for governor of Sicily. Rita Borsellino is running against Salvatore Cuffaro, who is standing trial on charges of collusion with Cosa Nostra.

Paolo Borsellino was assasinated in a car bomb attack in 1992. The sweeping prosecutions he and his colleague Giovane Falcone managed to bring against Italian and Sicilian underworld bosses before being themselves snuffed out, broke the back of the mafia’s influence on the economy and on politics. At least until the current lot of Christian Democrats, headed by the current Prime Minister, started back-peddling for reasons best known to themselves.

Rita Borsellino said she was fighting not just the incumbent but a whole system.

The aim of the mafia is not so much to kill magistrates as to make money. Money buys power and power buys money. It is not strange that the mafia looks for support from those in power. What is strange is that they find it.

Quite.