There was a moment, Wednesday 20 July, in which the gravity of the political crisis that at that moment was overwhelming the government led by Mario Draghi manifested itself in all its breadth. It happened around 4 pm, when the Ansa news agency released the news that the president of the republic Sergio Mattarella had started “telephone consultations hearing the leaders of the majority”.
The gravity was not so much in the political crisis in progress, overt for some time and waiting only for a formal proclamation, as in an intervention which – with a government that at that moment still had the confidence of parliament – ended up dramatically highlighting the inability of parties to find an outlet for a crisis that they themselves initiated and nurtured. But, above all, the publicity received by the intervention of the head of state in those particular circumstances gave the feeling of a substantial commissioner of the parliament, as well as of the entire political system.
It is not surprising that it has come this far. “The theater of the absurd”, was the headline of Avvenire, a newspaper of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, on July 15, following the political opening of the crisis. And really a better title would have been difficult to imagine, considering that at that moment the Prime Minister Mario Draghi had announced his resignation, despite having just received the trust of his majority, even without the participation of the 5-star Movement, which however he had explained that he wanted to remain in government. That was the latest fibrillation of an M5s which, like Matteo Salvini’s League, was, yes, in the majority but had already behaved for some time as if it were in the electoral campaign. Draghi’s resignation on that occasion was not accepted by Mattarella, who invited him to bring the crisis to parliament.
This led to Wednesday 20, when a new surreal day was experienced in the Senate. For the second time in a few days, Draghi announced his resignation, after having obtained the confidence of parliament for the second time in a few days. This time, however, even Lega and Forza Italia have lost their support, even without voting no. And so Draghi again went to the Quirinale to resign again, despite having received the trust of the majority. This time the resignation was accepted by Mattarella.
At that point, numbers aside, the legislature was politically exhausted. The political distance, already present for some time but now difficult to recover, had emerged unequivocally between the populist-inspired political forces present in the majority and the government that that majority supported. Mario Draghi had already taken note of this in recent days when, after the non-vote and the non-resignation of the 5-star Movement of 14 July, he explained to the ministers gathered in the evening at Palazzo Chigi that “today’s votes in parliament are a very significant from a political point of view. The majority of national unity that has supported this government since its creation is gone. The pact of trust at the basis of government action has failed ”. And this remained his position until the end.
The chambers were then dissolved in the afternoon of 21 July, after Mario Draghi had also informed the Chamber of Deputies of his decision in the morning. The political elections will be held on September 25th.
In announcing the dissolution of parliament, President Sergio Mattarella explained that the phase that the country is going through does not allow for pauses in interventions to counter the current emergencies, recalling the many formalities still awaiting in parliament. Finally, he significantly concluded: “For these reasons I hope that, despite the intense, and at times acute, dialectic of the electoral campaign, there will be a constructive contribution on the part of all, with regard to the aspects I have indicated, in the interest superior of Italy “.
Former European central banker, a personality who has always enjoyed great international prestige, Mario Draghi was called to head the government by Mattarella a year and a half ago, in a very difficult moment in the history of the country, to keep the accounts in order and face the health emergency due to covid-19, the social emergency and the most recent one subsequently caused by the war in Ukraine. Instead, he found himself having to deal above all with a structurally deteriorated political framework for decades, and which was the real cause of his farewell.
That the political forces are experiencing a phase of difficulty – a very long phase, however, and corresponding to the years of the second republic – is no longer even news. There has been, in the last thirty years, a substantial ideal disarmament, ever since the old popular parties have disappeared, quickly replaced by organizations much more like electoral committees, gathered around the figures of their own charismatic leaders.
What has been produced is a scenario in which the management of power per se has become central, without the guidance of ideas other than the personal interest or the group to which it belongs. And this also explains, among other things, the disappearance of social rights from the public debate which, on the other hand, has increasingly taken on the appearance of a permanent electoral campaign.
In the substantial political vacuum that this system has produced, the inability to give answers to society and citizens has favored the progressive affirmation of positions of a populist nature. In recent years, these positions have won very significant electorate shares.
The arrival of Draghi did not stop this process which, on the contrary, ended up overwhelming it. A prime minister who has proved politically weak, despite the guarantee role played by Mattarella. Called to Palazzo Chigi to keep the accounts in order and face the three emergencies of recent years, but also to try to sterilize the most radical populist pressures, in the end he too seemed to manifest attitudes of a populist nature, as it seemed evident in some passages of the speech delivered in the Senate on 20 July and which, in certain respects – and above all in the reference to the people as a source of direct legitimacy for the leader – recalled what Silvio Berlusconi held in the chamber in 1994, shortly before the fall of his first government in because of the fibrillation with the then ally Umberto Bossi.
It was at that moment, with the political affirmation of the direct and exclusive relationship between leader and people and the simultaneous distortion of the rules of parliamentary democracy, that even symbolically the doors were opened to populism in the political system of republican Italy. In recent decades, those impulses have been nurtured, often if only because of the banal ignorance of the political class.
This is demonstrated by the political debate of recent years, all folded back on tactics and alliances, without any ideal outlet, without a clear cultural horizon, without that debate can really be defined as political, since the goal of every movement seems to have always been power, and nothing more than that. The feeling is that last July 20, with the end of what will go down in history as the most bluntly populist legislature in Italian history, a phase, but not a historical cycle, was closed.