Thrust of Italian Constitution anti-Fascist - Flick

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 21 - The Italian Republic and its Constitution are the fruit of a Liberation resulting from both the Resistance against the occupying Nazi forces and the rejection of Fascism, its ideology and the 20 years of Fascist dictatorship in Italy, former Constitutional Court president Giovanni Maria Flick said on Friday.
    The Constitution "is the result of a Constituent Assembly that included a liberal, actionist and republican component, a Christian Democrat component and a social-communist component," said Flick, commenting on the furore surrounding Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa after he said in an interview with daily newspaper La Repubblica that "there is no mention of anti-Fascism" in the Italian Constitution.
    "To discuss today whether the Constitution has explicit connotations of anti-fascism is more an issue for philosophers or linguists; it does not seem to me to be an appropriate and important issue right now in our country, which needs cohesion from everyone to move forward," he added.
    Earlier Elly Schlein, the leader of opposition, centre-left Democratic Party (PD), hit back at La Russa, a leading exponent of Premier Giorgia Meloni's right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party who is not unfamiliar with controversy.
    "He said anti-Fascism isn't in the Constitution, we say that anti-Fascism is our Constitution," Schlein told a party meeting at Riano, near Rome.
    Opposition parties have called for La Russa to resign. (ANSA).