On July 14, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi presented his resignation to the Italian President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, who rejected it. The government tenure will be decided next Wednesday by Parliament.
Draghi’s move comes after the members of parliament of the Five Star Movement deserted the vote on the “aid decree” – a package of diverse measures worth 14 million euros designed to tackle the economic consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and on whose approval the government posed the vote of confidence.
While the numbers confirmed the Parliament’s confidence in the government, Draghi considered the crises from a wider political standpoint.
He considers “the coalition of national unity that supported this government” to no longer be there, despite efforts to “keep pursuing a common path.”
Since his inaugural address, Draghi, maintained that his government would only go on while a “clear perspective to realize the government’s program” existed. “This unity has been fundamental to facing the challenges these months have brought about, but these conditions no longer exist,” he remarked.
Draghi, during the past week, had already lamented the government’s challenge in working with the continuous threat of instability created by the Five Star Movement, led by former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
Draghi’s choice to present his resignation in front of the President of the Republic – who was implored by the composite Parliament to accept an exceptional second term in charge, given the impossibility to elect another figure – is an act of transparency and a cunning political move at the same time.
Had Draghi ignored the complaints of the Five Star Movement, Conte would have kept the government in check, significantly slowing down the decision-making process, and potentially undermining every political effort exceeding the short-term actions. By following the formal process required for a government’s resignation, instead, Draghi had the possibility to tie his faith to the choice of the undisputed President Mattarella’s authority.
On his side, Conte’s movement, that blocked the “aid decree” on a “matter of principle” – as it contained the project for an incinerator to be built in the rubbish-plagued city of Rome – defends its choice to paralyze the government.
The recent split with Luigi Di Maio, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, came after fundamental disagreements on aid to Ukraine.
A first international dispute on the Italian government crisis kicked off after Russia’s Dimitry Medvedev’s sarcastic comment on “who will be next”, after the U.K.’s Boris Johnson and Italy’s Draghi resigned, to which Di Maio responded: “My heart bleeds in seeing that on the other part of the world, in Moscow’s autocracy, Medvedev celebrates because one of the most powerful democracies in the world, Italy, has been weakened”, and “draghi’s head was served to Putin on a silver plate”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: “We wish Italy a government not subservient to the American interest”.
