Quirinale, between the precedent of Joseph Saragat elected after the 21st ballot and the possibilities of Silvio Berlusconi
Enrico Letta he is not right, when he says, to reject the candidacy of Berlusconi, which no party leader has ever been elected to Quirinale. Giuseppe Saragat (1898-1988), Turin, in 1964, was the head of the Psdi. After the retreats of the official candidate of the A.D, Giovanni Leone, and one of the scudocrociati “purebred horses”, Amintore Fanfani (the other was Aldo Moro), on the eighteenth ballot, there was an agreement between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats to vote Saragat, while PCI And PSI they continued to argue Pietro Nenni.
Finally, after three votes, in which the leaders of the two socialist parties had faced each other in a fratricidal confrontation, Nenni he asked the socialist parliamentarians, who supported him, to cast their votes on the eternal “friend-rival”. The Communists also voted for it, after the candidate had addressed “all democratic forces”. Giuseppe Saragat he was so elected President of the Italian Republic, the December 28 1964, to the twenty-first ballot, with 646 votes out of 963 members of the assembly (67.1%), in what, until then, was the most contested election to the highest office in the state.
Unlike Berlusconi, Saragat, a lover of the mountains and good wine, also from Colle, continued to lead a party of “homunculi”(As he defined it himself), which never exceeded 5%. And the key to that election was the conflict over the imprint to be given to the center left. On the 21st ballot, after that Fanfani And Nenni had withdrawn, moderate reading prevailed Dc-Psdi.
Enrico Letta, perhaps, he did not want to be disrespectful, before the founder of Come on Italy, to his uncle, Gianni, right-hand man of the former premier. History is not made with ifs and buts. He climbed, however, to the Colle, in 1964, Saragat, and not Nenni, on the eve of dramatic years (massacre of Piazza Fontana, etc.). 7 years later, Hamlet did not come out Aldo Moro, but Lion, with the decisive votes MSI. Events that did not strengthen institutions and democracy5.
As he noted Antonio Polito, deputy director of the “Corriere della Sera“, On the candidacy of Silvio to the Colle, “God cannot and must not say it alone. But the list of reasons why it is better not to be, is actually long”. Very long, dear Antonio and fellow readers….
#Quirinale #reasons #Silvio
