Rome, 24 January 2022 – Election of the President of the Republic: who had liquidated too soon Sergio Mattarella you may have to change your mind. As the hours go by, in fact, on the day of the first vote, due to this afternoon at 3pm, the name of the head of state returns to creep strongly between summits and confidential talks. While with the death, last night, of the deputy Fi Enzo Fasano the big voters drop to 1.008.
Mattarella is certainly in the thoughts of the dem secretary Enrico Letta, together with that of premier Mario Draghi, however on pole.
While the center-right is looking for a shared name. The list of eligible candidates is long. It starts from the wishes of Silvio Berlusconi, the president of the Senate Maria Elisabetta Casellati and the coordinator of Forza Italia Antonio Tajani, to land in Franco Frattini, twice foreign minister in the Berlusconi governments.
According to rumors, the leader of the League Matteo Salvini think of the director of Dis, Elisabetta Belloni. And in the meantime, in homage to the vote for the Quirinale, he sports a mask with written on the side ‘The team wins’, “a gift from a nun who prays for us and for Italy. A good omen”, he says.
Elisabetta Belloni, who is the new head of the secret services
In home 5digit everything is played on the word ‘veto’, in the joint assembly of the groups of the 5-star Movement of the Chamber and Senate which on Sunday evening puts on the table the different options under discussion: Giuseppe Conte adopts the line of the group leader in the Chamber Davide Crippa, who spoke of the risk of early elections: if the tenant of Palazzo Chigi changes, the members can vote online, the M5S could therefore technically slip from the majority, “direct democracy – underlines Conte – is also a pillar of new course of the M5S “. Conte sends other signals to the outside for the center-right, which must not get caught up in “delusions of omnipotence” and for the center-left, when he emphasizes that Lega-FI and FdI are “fully entitled” to present names, thus marking a distinction by Pd and LeU, with which however he reaffirms the existence of a permanent consultation pact on the evolution of the negotiation. Among the “doubters” on the Contian line no big names take the field but it is no secret that one of the most convinced supporters of the Draghi hypothesis is the Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio.
Despite the hectic contacts, it is stalemate between parties and the indication of most of the groups for the first call, which foresees two thirds of the voters, will be to vote white board. There is waiting in the morning for the meeting between Letta and Salvini while at 11 another summit should take place between Conte, Letta and Roberto Speranza.
The debate also enters the Financial Times. “A disorderly and divisive presidential electoral process that triggers a political crisis or derails progress on reforms would seriously worry Brussels and the financial markets”, is the thesis of one long editorial on the Italian political situation. The
Financial Times equates the Colle elections to a “papal conclave”: that is, there is no formal candidate, multiple secret ballots and intense behind-the-scenes negotiations. And instead, recalls the FT, Draghi gave an answer which, for the Italian political class, was clearly a codified offer of availability. “I have no particular aspirations of one kind or another,” said the former president of the European Central Bank. “I am a man, a grandfather, at the service of the institutions”. According to FT, Draghi represents for Italian politicians a real dilemma: better to keep the country’s most celebrated technocrat as prime minister, allowing him to move forward with an ambitious EU-funded reform program, or elevate him to head of state, potentially sparking a crisis over his succession at Palazzo Chigi?
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