President Sergio Mattarella re-elected after a week of divisions, Mario Draghi remains Prime Minister

“Habemus papam! The exclamation, launched by an Italian senator, says it all about the relief and the almost miraculous nature of the agreement reached by the different parties to elect a president. The white smoke at the Quirinale, the presidential palace in Rome, does not, however, bring a sign of novelty: it is the outgoing president, Sergio Mattarella, who has been appointed after an eighth (!) round of voting.

At 80, President Mattarella had repeated that he did not intend to continue in office, but during the day he made known to the heads of parliamentary groups his desire to make himself “available”. It must be said that in front of him, the candidacies of the former strong man of Italy Silvio Berlusconi and the porn actor Rocco Sifredi did not really succeed in bringing together… No more than that of Mario Draghi, the current Prime Minister, whose elevation to the rank of president raised fears of a complicated reshuffle of the government.

The choice of stability

Pledge of stability, Sergio Mattarella therefore re-enlists, in a country in the process of economic recovery and at a crossroads concerning the coronavirus epidemic. Praised, it collected 759 votes out of 1,009 senators, deputies and regional officials called to vote. The elected officials present in the hemicycle of the Chamber of Deputies where the counting was held applauded the results for a long time. Born in Palermo under Mussolini, Sergio Mattarella is a figure of Christian Democracy, the dominant formation in post-war political life against the Italian Communist Party (PCI).

He became a deputy for the first time in the early 1980s after the assassination by the mafia of his brother Piersanti, president of the Sicilian region. This trained lawyer, deputy for 25 years and five times minister, was not destined for the highest elective office. In 2008, then Minister of Defence, he left politics and became a judge at the Constitutional Court. In 2011, it was then already reluctantly that he became President of the Republic, pushed by the center-left government of Matteo Renzi.

Draghi more useful at his post

“Congratulations, dear Sergio, on your re-election”, tweeted French President Emmanuel Macron. “I know I can count on your commitment to keep the friendship between our countries alive, as well as this united, strong and prosperous Europe that we are building”. Hailing “a friend who understands the importance of Europe”, German President Frank Walter Steinmeier observed: “Europe needs a strong Italy and Italy will keep a forward-looking president with you. , which is not afraid of frankness, unites and offers orientation”. Mario Draghi hailed in a statement “wonderful news for Italians”.

The Prime Minister was deemed more useful in his current position. Favorite before the election, parliamentarians feared that his departure from the executive would blow up the coalition and cause early elections before the end of the legislature scheduled for 2023. This would also have weakened the recovery of the third economy of the euro zone and the implementation of the reforms necessary to benefit from the tens of billions of euros of the European post-Covid recovery plan, of which Italy is the first beneficiary.

For Guido Cozzi, an economist at the University of St. Gallen, “an extension of Sergio Mattarella’s mandate is ideal for the financial markets”. And with Mario Draghi at the helm of the executive, the injection of European funds and the planned investments are “guaranteed for a second year in a row”, he explains. “The legislature is saved,” noted the center-left daily La Repubblica, “even if the year that separates us from the polls risks being a repeat of the chaos we have witnessed in recent days. No illusions: Mattarella’s task will be more complicated than we imagine”.