Nicholas Farrell Nicholas Farrell

Sergio Mattarella is Italy’s captive president

Sergio Mattarella (Credit: ECB)

Ah, those Italians! Italy’s parliament spent last week trying and failing to elect a new president in seven secret ballots. Then, in the eighth ballot on Saturday evening, by a huge majority it re-elected the old one – Sergio Mattarella – against his will.

Mattarella, 80, formerly of the post-communist Partito Democratico (PD) and now an independent, had repeatedly said he did not want to serve a second seven-year term. He had even moved out of the Quirinale – the presidential palace – and into a flat elsewhere in Rome.

He was not actually a candidate because there are no formal candidates in an election for an Italian president whose powers, though limited, are often of crucial importance. The electorate – in this case, 951 senators and deputies and 58 regional delegates – simply votes for whoever they want as president by writing their name on a ballot paper. Those voted for are, though, usually asked beforehand if they mind.

But when, after days of failing to agree on anyone else, the grandi elettori cast 759 votes for Mattarella in that eighth ballot, he felt unable to refuse. He accepted, he said, out of a sense of duty to the Patria.

This typically Italian tragi-comedy has weakened and divided Italy’s parliament even more than it already was. Above all, it is a disaster for the coalition of the right which now risks a major reset, if not disintegration. This is despite poll after poll indicating it would win enough seats to get that most rare and precious of things in Italy at the next general election which must be held by 1 June 2023: a majority of the seats in parliament.

The fear of losing power is troubling many politicians

Two of the three parties in the coalition, the Lega, led by Matteo Salvini, and Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative Forza Italia, pledged that they would never vote for a second Mattarella presidency.

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