Chaos Days in Rome
It won’t be clear until next week whether Draghi will continue
7/15/2022 5:41 am
The period of stability in Italy’s government is over: Prime Minister Draghi submits his resignation, the President refuses. How things will continue should be clarified next week, after which there will be a vote of confidence in Parliament. The right-wing parties are hoping for new elections.
In Italy, the parties are looking for a way out of the government crisis. President Sergio Mattarella rejected a resignation request from Prime Minister Mario Draghi on Thursday evening. The 74-year-old now faces a vote of confidence in Parliament. There it should be clarified whether Draghi’s multi-party government still has a solid majority after a scandal surrounding the Five Star Movement. Within the government there are votes for a continuation as well as for new elections.
As can be heard from government circles, next Wednesday has been set as the date for the parliamentary debate. The Mediterranean country, which is already being hit by a drought and energy crisis, faces five days of uncertainty about the future of the man who was still celebrated in 2021 – also internationally – as a big political winner.
It has been clear in Rome since Thursday evening who is for and who is against Draghi. The Social Democrats and Center parties spoke out in favor of continuing the government of the 74-year-old. Far-right Fratelli d’Italia call for immediate elections; the right-wing Lega and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia – who, unlike the Fratelli, are represented in the government – could also make friends with it.
Five stars provoke coalition break
The five stars of ex-Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte had provoked Draghi’s resignation when they voted in confidence in the Senate – the smaller of the two chambers of Parliament – on an aid decree of around 26 billion euros for Italian families because of the consequences of the Ukraine war and high energy prices stayed away. Draghi saw no more basis for a cooperation. President Mattarella, who appointed the former head of the European Central Bank (ECB) as an independent expert in winter 2021, refused his resignation. Instead, he asked Draghi to clarify in parliament whether he could still gather a majority behind him.
“Now we have five days to work to ensure that Parliament votes in favor of the Draghi government and that Italy gets out of this dramatic spiral into which it has slipped in the past few hours as quickly as possible,” tweeted Enrico Letta, party leader of the Partito Democratico. Matteo Renzi from the small Italia Viva party, who, like Letta himself, was once prime minister, also promised Draghi his support for the continuation of the government.
The right-wing parties, however, sense their chances in new elections – above all the right-wing extremist Fratelli d’Italia, which is currently the strongest party in polls, tied with the Social Democrats. “With Draghi’s resignation, this legislative period is over for the Fratelli d’Italia,” said party leader Giorgia Meloni. Lega said: “It is unthinkable that Italy should freeze for weeks in a dramatic moment like this. Nobody should be afraid to give the Italians the floor.” Berlusconi had said before the vote of confidence that he and Forza Italia would not be afraid of a premature return to the ballot box.
The parties on both the left and right were largely in agreement on one thing: that the Five Star Movement irresponsibly plunged the country into the crisis. How things will continue with the populists – who were still the clear winners in the 2018 elections – is completely open. Italy’s Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said in a TV interview that evening that his “heart bleeds” when he sees a man like ex-President Dmitry Medvedev in autocratic Russia rejoicing, “because one of the strongest democracies in the world has been weakened in Italy became”. Di Maio recently left the Five Star Movement.