ROME — The stunning announcement Prime Minister Mario Draghi said he would resign after an uprising in his national unity government left Italians alarmed and baffled on Friday, and bitten by a deep sense of uncertainty about where the country was headed next.
Political and business leaders were incredulous. Church leaders expressed concern. Italians, accustomed to more than their share of political uproar, shake their heads in disbelief in coffee bars.
“I don’t know exactly what happened yesterday. Italian politics is always so hard to understand, we just forgot about it when Draghi was in power,” said Laura Comasi, 33, as she wiped the street in front of the clothing store in Rome, where she works near the Parliament. “I just know that during his reign I felt safe and part of a credible country.”
President Sergio Mattarella on Thursday refused to accept Mr Draghi’s resignation and instead asked him to address Parliament next week and take a measure of his support, including the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, which withdrew its support in a confidence vote.
The move was widely seen as an attempt by Mr Mattarella, who has provided Italy with stability for an exceptionally unstable seven years, to freeze the situation and give Mr Draghi time to reconsider, and the Italian political forces time to convince him to stay on.
Draghi actually survived the confidence vote, but he has raised the bar above the usual leader in Italy’s fragmented coalition politics. He argued that he had been brought in to lead a government of national unity, and that there was no point in staying if there was no unity and major parties wanted to hold the government hostage with lists of demands.
That’s asking a lot of Italians, who are more accustomed to the horse trade, backroom deals and power dynamics that government typically fuels. But for a year and a half, Mr Draghi, who is not a political neophyte, has managed to lead with an exceptionally broad consensus – and get things done.
With Italy enjoying greater stability and relevance, the news that part of Mr Draghi’s coalition would move on and put the country back on shaky footing was all the more astonishing.
Some leaders on Friday seemed to think it was possible that Mr Draghi would stay, and certainly hoped so.
“We have asked President Mario Draghi to reconsider his decision: a crisis right now opens uncertain prospects for the country,” Andrea Orlando, a member of the center-left Democratic Party and the minister of Labor and Social Policy, said in Trento on Friday. . “Over the past few weeks we have opened up a discussion on the issue of wages, and providing an answer is a priority.”
Giancarlo Giorgetti, the powerful economic development minister at the nationalist League party, used the metaphor of the extra stoppage time at the end of a football game to give hope that Mr Draghi could stay.
“There is always extra time,” he said.
But most saw a fortune reversal as an opportunity and had already begun to see the damage. Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, a former five-star leader who left last month to form his own party, Together for the Future, labeled Mr Draghi’s possible departure a disaster for Italy and a victory for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
“Yesterday they were toasting in Moscow,” said Mr Di Maio in an interview on national radio. “Because Mario Draghi’s head was served to Putin on a silver plate. Autocracies toast and democracies are weaker.”
“Now even Europe is weaker,” he added.
Mr Di Maio, who knows the inner workings of Five Star well, added that “this crisis was planned in advance”.
Italian business had shown strong support for Mr Draghi, a former president of the European Central Bank, who is largely credited with saving the euro. They believed that he brought stability and a favorable investment climate. The leaders seemed almost struck with disbelief at the turn of events.
“With complete disbelief, we are witnessing political developments that clearly ignore the commitments that the government has made with its majority and with the country,” said Carlo Bonomi, the leader of the Italian industrial association, Confindustria.
He called the uprising of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement an act of “complete irresponsibility that leaves us speechless” that could lead to rising borrowing costs and economic pain.
Hand wringing was not limited to secular society.
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the Archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, who is close to Pope Francis, said on Friday that “we are watching with great concern the political situation taking shape”.
He complained that the political crisis was now threatening to flare up “a more general phase of crisis” defined by the war in Ukraine, inflation and the ongoing pandemic.
Those who linked their chariots to the Five Star Movement tried to argue that it was Mr Draghi who was to blame.
Marco Travaglio, editor of the anti-establishment and pro-populist newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, argued that “the ex-banker” who was used to getting his way had essentially fallen from power by following his own pride and unable to had to mediate. “He was looking for the crisis,” he wrote.
Draghi’s most ardent supporters, who view him as a political savior who has set Italy on a path to modernization, stronger democratic values and common sense, saw it differently.
Christian Rocca, the editor of Linkiestawho despised the Italian Five Star Movement as a dangerous band of incompetent and anti-democratic nincompoops, has for years warned that Giuseppe Conte, the head of Five Star, would have devastating consequences for Italy.
Conte, a lawyer plucked from obscurity to run the country, was pushed out of office as prime minister last year, and Mr Draghi was brought in by the president like a pair of hands to replace him.
Rocca wrote on Friday that it was a “sign of these mad times” that “the wretched lawyer with no skills or talent, who, against the backdrop of a dramatic attack on Europe, ordered a criminal admired by his movement of Five Idiots.” , overthrows a government led by the most authoritative political figure in the Western Hemisphere.”
Draghi’s other influential backers tried to maintain a degree of optimism.
Claudio Cerasa, the editor of Il Fogliowrote that while there was an “irresistible” temptation for the coalition to re-merge and convince Mr Draghi, who had arrived to provide stability like “manna from heaven” to sit down, things would be very good. could lead to early elections.
But Cerasa argued that such a possibility was not necessarily so dire, given that the last time snap elections seemed likely, in 2019, Matteo Salvini, the nationalist leader of the League party, seemed almost invincible.
He argued that Mr Mattarella and Mr Draghi had inoculated Italy with anti-populist ‘antibodies’ and that Mr Draghi’s government had essentially set Italy’s future path with unbreakable contracts and pledges to finance billions of euros for the European Union to receive.
With the opposing sides blaming and pointing fingers, the most pertinent question was what would happen. On Friday, the focus among MPs and political operatives shifted to League leader Mr Salvini, who could very well determine the government’s survival if Mr Draghi is willing to continue at all.
Mr Salvini, since he slipped from power in 2019 in a coup that became too big, has been desperate for a chance to go to snap elections and cash in on his popularity. But political machinations continue to deny him that opportunity. When mr. Draghi arrived, saw Mr. Salvini put the writing on the wall and joined the government of national unity, hoping to show responsibility in times of crisis.
Throughout all this, his popularity waned, while that of fellow right-wing politician Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, skyrocketed as she remained in opposition and campaign mode.
Now the Five Star uprising has given Mr Salvini political cover to leave. But it’s unclear what he wants. On the one hand, an alliance with Mrs. Meloni and center-right forces make them hard to beat in early elections. But Mr Salvini’s base of businessmen in the north of the country, like Mr Draghi, and the stability and investment he brings, and they fear the economic consequences of a new phase of political instability.
Salvini wrote on the League’s Facebook page that his side “will do what is right for Italy and the Italians”.
Gaia Pianigianic contributed reporting from Rome.