Blank vote in the first round: Italy slows down the election of president

• Questions with answers Italy elects a president: step by step of a cumbersome and decisive process

• Voting Italy chooses president with all players hiding their cards

The first rounds of voting in the election of a president in Italy are a mix of chess championship and variety show. On the one hand, caution, starting tables without many risks and in a few moves to avoid mistakes. Mass blank votes so that time goes by and only the least skilled are burned. On the other, the show, the frivolity. As the process involves writing the name of the candidate by hand, and there is no official name, anyone can be included, from presenters (Amadeus, Bruno Vespa) to paleontologists (such as Alberto Angela, also on television), including historian Alessandro Barbero, author from a recent biography of Dante, or football legend Dino Zoff. Chosen to cause laughter or try to divert attention from meetings where the cod is really distributed.

There have been several of these today in Rome.

The first, unexpected and the one that generated the most attention, between the leader of La Liga, Matteo Salvini, and the prime minister, Mario Draghi, still one of the main favorites to change the Palazzo Chigi for the Quirinale.

It lasted less than an hour but it served to mark the entire political day in the capital, among the rumors about the issues addressed, if there were vetoes and, if produced, in what direction.

The centre-right, in principle, does not want the former central banker.

Brothers of Italy of Giorgia Meloni because they know that she and her family are and will almost certainly continue to be marginalized.

Strength Italy, after the resignation of Berlusconi, and La Liga, because they want the next Executive to have more politicians and fewer technicians.

It is the price they ask Draghi for his support:

in Interior. And

doesn't jump through hoops. It cannot offer the guarantees that are demanded of it, so the blockade continues for now.

The second meeting also featured Salvini, this time with the leader of the Democratic Party, Enrico Letta, whose weight in this process is being much higher than it should be according to the numbers.

, they explained in a joint statement, something also very unusual and the most relevant news to date. Both parties addressed "hypotheses" about what will happen in the coming days. No block, neither the center-right nor the center-left, can lift anyone up, and they know it, but they bring positions closer. A consensus candidate is necessary, because as former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi used to say these days:

.

The president is agreed, but also details of future executives and nobody wants to be left out.

Salvini also spoke with Conte, and Conte with Antonio Tajani, Berlusconi's strong man

.

After weeks of doubts, silences and unknowns, it's time to move the chips.

The objective, on Monday, was not the game, but to define the perimeter of the game.

All the sources consulted in the Palazzo di Montecitorio, where 1,008 major voters meet between senators, deputies and regional envoys, is that

, requiring two-thirds support (673).

But perhaps it will be resolved on Thursday or Friday, when only 505 are needed. In the first round, out of 976 participants, 672 blank votes were counted, ironically only one below the number needed to support a candidate.

Trying to get clues from the rest of the names, at this point, would lead to nothing.

'Mattarella bis'

The parties now negotiate politicians, figures of weight such as the two-time Prime Minister Giuliano Amato or Pier Luigi Casini, who left a very good memory as President of Parliament.

They have support on both sides of the spectrum, reputation, but that's not enough.

If the block persists, and at the moment it seems most likely, the two other possibilities will open up.

The first is a figure like Draghi, the former Constitutional judge Paolo Maddalena (the one who had the most direct support yesterday), or the magistrate and Minister of Justice, Marta Cartabia, in the always imprecise margins that in this country define who is and who not a pure politician.

"In the next few hours, the center-right will make a series of proposals, women and men with a high institutional and cultural profile,

The second possibility, in any case, is the so-called 'Mattarella bis',

, continue a little longer, as his predecessor Giorgio Napolitano did until he was almost 90 years old.

He doesn't want to, but no one rules him out completely and some applaud him furiously, like the dozens of deputies who wrote his name on the papers today.

Until the weekend it seemed that the Draghi option would go before the 'Mattarella bis', but today the rumors began to favor a reverse order, as I see it as a reasonable way out until the next elections, scheduled for 2023.

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• Matteo Salvini

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