The next government will be number 68 since the Second World War: they have lasted an average of thirteen months
Next October 27 marks the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the March on Rome, the coup with which thousands of fascists headed towards the Italian capital to promote Benito Mussolini’s seizure of power. As the next general elections in the country will be held on September 25, it is foreseeable that the new government will take office in the second half of the following month, when this significant event takes place. The coincidence is particularly disturbing for the forces of the left because the polls predict a victory in the elections of the conservative bloc, led by the candidate of the sovereignist Brothers of Italy (HdI) party, Giorgia Meloni, and of which the League of Matteo Salvini and Forza Italia (FI), Silvio Berlusconi’s political force.
The new Executive that comes out of the next appointment with the polls will be number 68 in the country since the Second World War: they have lasted an average of just over thirteen months. The one led by Mario Draghi until the collapse of the government coalition this week, and which will continue in office until the next government is formed, has had a somewhat longer life, a year and a half. It was the third of the legislature, which began in 2018. First there was one formed by an alliance between the populist 5 Star Movement (M5E), the party with the most votes in the previous elections, and the League. It lasted only one year and three months, and was led by Giuseppe Conte. Salvini dynamited it in a crazy month of August with the idea of forcing the call for early elections in the fall, in which he hoped to sweep after his formation had obtained 34% in the European elections of May 2019.
Salvini was left with the desire on that occasion, since the M5E negotiated a new alliance, in this case with the Democratic Party and other small forces of the left and center, to give life to the second Government led by Conte. That Executive did not have a much longer life either: he lasted a year and five months. The person in charge of knocking him down was on that occasion Matteo Renzi, former prime minister and leader of the Italia Viva party, who maneuvered to make Draghi the next head of the Italian government, supported by a heterogeneous coalition made up of nine political forces with different ideologies. , which ranged from the extreme left to the sovereignist right.
structural deficiency
“Italy has been experiencing political instability for years that is more stable than it seems,” explains Mattia Diletti, professor of Political Science at La Sapienza University in Rome, for whom the crisis that has caused the fall of the Draghi Executive is not more than a new manifestation of a structural deficiency that has existed for decades and that citizens have learned to cope with despite the political and economic costs that it entails. “At the base of the problem is the fragility of the parties, their transformism and the lack of roots that they suffer today in society,” says the professor at La Sapienza.
This problem dates back at least to the days of Tangentopoli, the corruption scandal that rocked the political system in the early 1990s and killed the two main forces, the Christian Democracy and the Socialist Party. The end of almost five decades of certain stability thanks to bipartisanship, spiced up with the fights between the internal currents of the formations, which led to the fall of some governments, left an enormous parliamentary fragmentation, which constitutes another of the causes of the usual political crises. That power vacuum was cleverly filled by Berlusconi with his political creature, Forza Italia. Thanks to his vitola as a self-made successful businessman catapulted to fame by his television channels, the tycoon won his first elections in 1994 and since that campaign he has been the star of the Italian electoral landscape, divided between those who favor and dislike his figure.
«That Forza Italia was the daughter of what happened in the 80s. It was a libertarian party that was in a government that could be defined as center-right, while the Executive that could now arrive with HdI, the League and FI would be from ‘center right ‘”, Warns Giovanni Orsina, Professor of Political Science at the Luiss-Guido Carli University in Rome, for whom this week’s political crisis has pushed conservative formations towards more right-wing positions. The League and FI, which were part of the government coalition led by Draghi, have been dragged down by HdI, which, by remaining the only opposition force, has managed to climb in the polls to become the formation that today has the greatest voting intention , almost 24%. “And that Meloni has not had to do anything during the legislature. He has limited himself to saying ‘no’ to everything and asking for the calling of early elections », emphasizes Orsina.
Significant anomaly
The next elections may also represent the opportunity to put an end to a significant anomaly that partly explains the instability of the last decade: since 2011 there has been no Italian prime minister who has been directly elected by the citizens at the polls. Since Berlusconi handed over the baton to the technocrat Mario Monti suffocated by the financial crisis, all the heads of government have come to power as a result of agreements between the parties. These pacts are by their nature unstable and very sensitive to the changes of mood that the successive municipal, regional and European elections cause in the parties. “The Italian political system has been improvising since 2011, finding solutions to survive one crisis after another,” says Diletti.
Recent Italian history suggests that it will be difficult for the next government not to also be shaken by internal tensions and ego struggles. The fight for the positions has already begun: Salvini has kicked off the electoral campaign by advancing his intention on social networks to return to deal with the Ministry of the Interior. Nor will it be easy for the conservative bloc to figure out who would lead the Executive. Meloni insists that the one who obtains the most votes of the three parties should do so, but it is not at all clear that, if that honor corresponds to HdI, she will become prime minister.
“I don’t know if an eventual right-wing government would be headed by Meloni. Let’s not forget that the appointment of the Prime Minister according to the Constitution is a responsibility of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, “says Orsina, highlighting the work that the Head of State will do to guarantee the pro-European and Atlantic position of Italy.
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