Confidence passes to Prime Minister Draghi in the Senate, but with only 95 votes in favor: the lowest result that the government has achieved in this legislature. A small number to continue the government’s path.
The Prime Minister will announce in the Chamber, at the beginning of the general discussion, his intention to resign at the Quirinale. The session is convened for 9:00.
GOVERNMENT AT THE END OF THE LINE
Mario Draghi no longer has the majority. At the end of a day “of madness”, as the secretary of the Democratic Party Enrico Letta summarizes it, the non-vote in the Senate by not only the 5 Star Movement but also by the “center-right of the government”, as they continued to define themselves until last Lega and Forza Italia, certifies the end of the very wide agreements. There is no longer that national unity which, in the words of the premier in the Chamber, guaranteed “democratic legitimacy and effectiveness” to the executive. Technically, Draghi collects trust from Pd, Leu Ipf, Toti’s center. But he only gets 95 yes. A figure that will lead him to announce his resignation at the beginning of the debate on trust in the Chamber and then go up to the Quirinale within the day. In short, the 5 days of decantation that the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella had imposed on the premier before making his resignation definitive, announced because the “pact of trust” that Draghi reproposed to Parliament had failed. But with tones and ways that have infuriated above all the League, then the whole center-right, gathered at Villa Grande. But also the 5 Stars, for “the contemptuous attitude”, as Giuseppe Conte defines him, silent all day, but who in the evening blurts out: “we were put at the door”. “We are there” but “with a new majority and a new government”, with the 5S out, the Northern League leader Massimiliano Romeo thunders in the hemicycle of Palazzo Madama. A tough position, on which Lega and Fi arrive united in the House, even if the landslides begin immediately after, with the farewell, which makes noise, of Mariastella Gelmini to her party. The condition set by the center-right, while some ministers look disconsolate, is “inadmissible” for Draghi.
Enough ambiguity, is the premier’s request in the 36 minutes of his speech. He addresses, without mentioning them directly, above all to Lega and M5s who, not by chance, do not join in the applause that follows the end of the speech in the Chamber. The League never applauds, the Fdi allies note with some satisfaction. Of course, Draghi opens up to autonomy, to pension reform, to improvements in citizenship income, to maintaining the objectives of ecological transition, to resolving critical issues on the Superbonus. But then, he urges: you cannot ask for energy security for the Italians and at the same time “protest” against the regasification plants. You cannot support the reforms and then give the square the edge, as in the case of taxis. Ukraine must continue to be armed because it remains the only way “to help the Ukrainians to defend themselves”. In the reply, however, it is harsh and explicit. He responds to the M5s’ criticism of super bonuses and minimum wages. And he rejects the accusation of various senators of having in fact asked for “full powers”: “Democracy-almost hisses-is parliamentary and it is the democracy that I respect and recognize”. To try to save what can be saved until the end, the parties of the now former majority still ask for an hour and a half. Plans and strategies are being sought to the last to keep the legislature on its feet. Part of a round of phone calls between the parties and the Hill (“Berlusconi had communicated our proposal” to Draghi and Mattarella, specify from Lega and Fi). Letta arrives at the Senate and sees first D’Incà and Franceschini, then Roberto Speranza and Giuseppe Conte. We also cling to the procedural rules: if Fi Lega and M5S do not participate in the vote, there is no quorum, the last hope of the governors. But the 5 Stars remain in the Chamber, the quorum is there and the end of national unity is regularly certified. “We have done everything possible” to avoid the worst ending of a “dramatic” day, the Democratic Party, which most of all has spent most of all on averting the early vote, says. A “black page for Italy”, the policy “has failed”, adds Di Maio. And now, Enrico Letta predicts, “we will go to elections quickly”. But to decide the times will be the Quirinale where Draghi should in fact go up, after the passage, probably quick, to Montecitorio to announce that he will resign.
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MATTARELLA’S LAST ATTEMPT – A last attempt with the awareness that the political framework was now torn between a center-right already drunk with victory in the next elections and a Five Star Movement in the throes of a surge of populism and winds of splitting. Sergio Mattarella, like every president of the Republic, did everything possible to avoid the traumatic end of the legislature and also of a government, the one led by Mario Draghi, which he wanted to guide the country between Covid and war and manage the very difficult path of mass on the ground of the Pnrr. It was no coincidence that he had refused the premier’s resignation last week: there was still a hole to be widened, a path to follow. And it was not easy for the head of state to convince the former governor of the ECB to reflect, meditate, try again. A job on the hips, it was defined, which took time to deliver the belly of the country to the premier, that is, that real world of citizens and associations who invited him, sometimes prayed, to stay at Palazzo Chigi. It wasn’t enough. Mattarella was forced to pick up the phone for a final clarification with the leaders of the political forces in talks that, it is reported, developed somewhere between an exploration of the remaining possibilities in the field and a post-Draghi preparation. Because the Quirinale had long been ready for the traumatic event.
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MELONS EXULTA
“I remember when everyone looked at me from top to bottom because I didn’t understand anything about politics, that we were going back to a sewer. After a year we saw who understands the dynamics of our democracy”. Giorgia Meloni responds with a slight grin and a satisfied expression to those who ask her if the overwhelming day that was consumed in the Senate is also a victory for the Brothers of Italy. It is 20:00 and she has just arrived at the party organized by the Roman federation of the party, in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II. Before her, the group leader in Montecitorio, Francesco Lollobrigida (“yes today I’m happy”) and the vice president of the Chamber Fabio Rampelli (“in the center right we are now the party to be destroyed!”) Have already intervened on the stage. Meloni is not unbalanced with the reporters, her brief intervention from the stage is in line with the releases of the last few days, she does not sing victory, but she is the one who reaped the best results today. Her battle against the survival of the government fights her outside the hall of Palazzo Madama, picking up the continuity party from the morning and the only person able to lead it forward, Prime Minister Mario Draghi: “He arrives in Parliament and in fact demands full powers, claiming that the Italians asked him “, he writes on Facebook, commenting on the speech from the benches of the Prime Minister. In his second speech, Draghi himself replies:” You decide. No requests for full powers “. Then, while at Villa Grande Berlusconi, Salvini, Giorgetti, Lupi and the high representation of the center right of government decide to pull the plug from the former European banker, he disappears for a few hours and leaves his followers in the Senate with the task of carrying out the parliamentary confrontation. With the center-right allies you speak from a distance and stay up to date. At the end of the vote comes the phone call with the Knight. When she takes the stage of the Fdi party, the first thing she comes to say is that it was “a complex day”, but then she immediately starts with her mantra: “In Western democracies the will of the citizens is manifested with a free vote and secret, they make the parades in the regimes “, throwing another jab at Draghi. The intervention is short, she Meloni she says she has to escape given the particular moment. Today a new phase is opening for her, which could bring her back to the government: “I have my ideas on how this nation should be governed”. But one thing is certain she feels she is the real winner of this match and she does not hide it when she says running away from the journalists: “history has proved us right”.
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ANSA agency
Gelmini leaves the Azzurri. But coalition regroups ahead of the vote (ANSA)
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