Italy Presidential election is pure theatre – but it matters

Next week the Italian parliament will undergo one of its more colourful – and honourable – rituals: the election of a new President of the Republic. All good pieces of theatre depend on timing, and the timing of this one is tricky, for Italy and the world.

A college of “Grand Electors” will meet at the Palazzo Montecitorio, the Lower House of parliament. These number all eligible parliamentarians, Senators and Deputies, plus 80 or so special nominees from Italy’s regions. The voting is by secret ballot, with names of candidates written on the voting papers. A majority of 673, two thirds, can win on the first three ballots. Then it takes a simple majority of 505 to be elected. At each round the weaker candidates drop out.

It is a ritual full of ceremony, and fun, for a job of great prestige but very little hands-on power. So why the fuss this time?

First the fun. Candidates shouldn’t declare themselves – but this time one of the great performers of Italian public life had made no bones about wanting the job. Silvio Berlusconi, 85, is a three-time former prime minister (convicted of fraud), billionaire entrepreneur, and former cruise ship crooner. In office he was notorious for his “Bunga Bunga” parties with young female artistes. In recent weeks he has been reported phoning up fellow electors and announcing himself as “Signor Bunga Bunga” before attempting to canvas a vote.

Were he to be selected at 85, he would be 92 at the end of the seven-year term of the presidency. He has said that he would like the present prime minister, Mario Draghi, former chair of the ECB and a leading economist, to stay on – despite being unelected. Berlusconi, however, hasn’t entirely ruled out demanding a vote of no confidence in the government, a cross party coalition of politicians and technicians. Parties allied to his revived Forza Italia on the Right, namely Matteo Salvini’s Lega, and the Brothers of Italy of Giorgia Meloni, have been dropping broad hints about the need for fresh elections.

These would come just as the dramatic reform and recovery programme crafted by Mario Draghi is getting up a full head of steam. It involves the expenditure of some €235 billion, the lion’s share of some €190 billion coming from the EU’s Covid recovery fund. Draghi has won plaudits for what he has achieved so far. After years of stagnation the Italian economy has grown robustly. He has set about reforming Italy’s creaking justice system – for years the notion of the law’s delay has been a pathetic understatement. He is also trying to raise standards and opportunities for women in the workplace.

His success led the Economist magazine to nominate Italy as the country of the year in its Christmas edition – mostly for the growth in the economy and the sense of optimism installed by Draghi’s enigmatic and charismatic personality.

If he became President, he would be there for seven years in the role of a grand “Fourth Official”, ensuring competence and fair play in the field of justice as well as government. Italian presidents have grown steadily more powerful and influential in recent years under the last three outstanding incumbents: Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, like Draghi a former central bank governor and who unusually was elected in the first round, Giorgio Napolitano, the great former Euro communist who unusually did one and a half terms, and the present incumbent, the quiet and dignified Sergio Mattarella – on whom an awful lot now hangs.

If Draghi is chosen, he could just appoint a new prime minister in his own image to see the recovery programme through to the late spring of next year, at the end of the present parliament’s five-year term. Draghi always intended his economic recovery to run for two years initially.

Present allies in the coalition are already setting out to upset this arrangement, to get a new government in and trigger a new election. The nationalist Lega chief and former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is leading the charge. He believes he has the backing of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, now riding high in the polls, and most of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia crew. They think they would win enough seats in a general election to form a new rightwing nationalist coalition. Salvini wants to be prime minister, and senses this might be his last chance.

This possibility has already started spooking the markets, and many fear that Salvini and Meloni are jeopardising the entire recovery project.

There are two unknowns now in play. First, it is not evident that Mario Draghi wants the job – though to turn down such an honour, to make Dante’s “gran rifiuto” or great refusal as Celestine V did of the papacy, would be an insult to the office of President and Italian State. The second unknown is whether Sergio Mattarella would be prepared to be elected for an interim second term of 18 months to two years. This is what Giorgio Napolitano did ten years ago in the interest of saving Italy in its hour of crisis. It would allow Draghi to be chosen as president once the initial phase of his recovery offensive is complete.

So far Mattarella has said he doesn’t want to hang on, and it is time to go. But he is a deeply honourable man – in the estimate of my friend the writer Marella Caracciolo-Chia “he is the best president Italy has had so far.” Could he be persuaded that this is not the time to rock the boat, and that his cool and calm hand is needed on the tiller for just another round? He has used his powers of heading the judiciary, summoning and dismissing prime ministers, governments and parliaments with elegance, adroitness and humanity. After all, it was Sergio Mattarella that persuaded Mario Draghi to become prime minister and take command of the Covid emergency and the economic recovery operation.

Not that Mario Draghi lacks critics. In a catty OpEd in the Washington Post, Mattia Ferraresi of the newspaper Domani, took issue with his record. “Don’t fall for the hype. Italy is ‘no country of the year,” screams the headline on her piece. She wrote that Italy didn’t deserve the praise from the Economist. Italy at last is enjoying growth, she concedes, but only after a 9 per cent contraction in GDP in 2020. Moreover, public debt is still 154.4 per cent of GDP.

Productivity levels are still low. Italians are still leaving in numbers to get work abroad. Fertility rates are low – a key indicator of confidence. Moreover, youth unemployment – the 20 and young 30-year-olds – is around 30 per cent. This contrasts with the economic performance of France through the Covid pandemic, which has been remarkably buoyant, as Paul Krugman has just pointed out in the New York Times. He is right in suggesting that it is likely to be a major factor in the re-election of Emmanuel Macron. This is despite France enjoying shorter statutory working week and lower pension age than many European rivals. Youth employment is picking up in France today.

Ferraresi concedes grudgingly that Draghi has injected a spirit of major reform and optimism. This worries her, as he the unelected prime minister has succeeded where elected premiers and coalitions have failed.

What the editor of Domani avoids recognising is that Draghi is a world class cajoler and fixer, and that would be his great value either in continuing as prime minister or as president.

Meanwhile for fans of all kinds of Italian theatre and opera it is not a case of Tonio’s sobbing aria “è finite la commedia’ (the drama is over) in Cavalleria Rusticana, but ‘è iniziata la commemdia’ – the comedy is just beginning.

In the initial round all kinds of candidates get written in on the ballot papers – for years Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida were great favourites. Recently the leftist 5 Star Movement, desperately trying to re-invent itself now that it likes being in parliament and government, has said ideally it is time for a woman president. Almost overnight posters have appeared in Rome and posts on Instagram with the visage of the veteran former crooner Silvio Berlusconi, 85, photoshopped as a woman.

The attention being given to the choice, however, suggests the new importance of the office, and of Italy, in the affairs of Europe and the world today. And that is in no small measure down to the comportment and ability of Mario Draghi and Sergio Mattarella.