Italy desperately seeks President of the Republic

At 85, Silvio Berlusconi is attempting a return to political life by running for the presidency of the Italian Republic.

Tiziana Fabi AFP/Archivos

Text by: Anne Tréca Follow

3 mins

After seven years in the Quirinal Palace, the mandate of Italian President Sergio Mattarella expires on February 3, 2022. In this election by indirect suffrage, the political parties are responsible for designating his successor.

The case seems particularly complex and the atmosphere in Rome is electric.

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From our correspondent in Rome

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The stakes of the Italian presidential election are enormous because if the president in Italy has no executive power, he is the guarantor of a certain continuity.

In 7 years, Sergio Mattarella, for example, has known 5 heads of government.

A broken, unmanageable Parliament.

It was he who sewed up the majorities, chose the Prime Ministers and finally ensured stability in the country.

However, Italy is under pressure: it is necessary to manage the pandemic, the 200 billion of the European recovery plan and to make the reforms expected in Brussels.

Otherwise, you risk losing everything. 

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A poorly elected president would lead to the fall of the government, early elections and months of paralysis. The only avowed candidate for the moment is Silvio Berlusconi. At 85, the former head of government wants to return to power through the front door. But does he really have a chance of becoming the next president of the Italian republic? Either way, he believes it. He served his sentence for tax evasion.

, he has a media empire at his disposal and has won the support of all right-wing party leaders. That said, 7 days before the first ballot, he still lacks to win around sixty electors - out of a good thousand. So we wonder if he will not prefer to withdraw from the race rather than risk the humiliation of a defeat at the polls. 

The problem is that by entering the arena, Berlusconi prevented the emergence of another, more unifying profile.

On the left and among the M5S, Mouvement des 5 étoiles, we have not yet found better, but the Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, is for many the man for the job.

Capable of uniting around him a vast coalition from right to left to obtain European aid, he is very popular and has given the country back an international influence that we thought had been lost.

And the former banker is him of an irreproachable probity.

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But here the system becomes perverse.

Many elected officials, on the right and on the left, are in fact so happy with Draghi as Prime Minister that they do not want to send him to the Quirinal. 

From January 24, there will be one ballot per day.

And it can last for days, a bit like the election of a pope!

In Rome one loses oneself in conjectures, in intrigues, in Byzantine calculations where nothing is clear except that the party leaders have poor control of their troops.

With the Covid in the background and elected officials absent as the contagions progress, it is impossible to make a serious prognosis! 

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