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Dragons effect vanished or never existed? The unstoppable downward trend of the premier

Has the Draghi effect been exhausted or are we even faced with the signal of a political breakdown following the disappointment for not going up to the Quirinale?

Last 12 July, following the victory of Mancini's national team in the European football championships, Il Messaggero spoke explicitly of the “ Draghi effect on the ball: Super Mario helps Super Mancio ”. The merit of the premier? Having created an international context favorable to Italy, presenting it in European and world fora as a serious, credible and renewed country; a country that gives this image – wrote Mario Ajello – is equipped to win. In short, Draghi had been the architect of this reinvigorated Italy which, in those days, triumphed at Wembley inflicting a displeasure at home on the much hated Boris Johnson and was represented for the first time in the Wimbledon final thanks to Matteo Berrettini, then defeated by Djokovic. Indeed, even the musical success of the Maneskin on the world audience was attributed to these almost thaumaturgical skills of the prime minister who remotely controlled both Donnarumma's gloves and the Roman tennis player's racket. Except that, once the oleographic story is over and the hyperboles have been exhausted, we have to deal with reality and, to stay on the subject of metaphor, with the recent and burning exclusion (the second consecutive) of the national team from the world championships to be held in Qatar. So how do we put it? Has the Draghi effect been exhausted or are we even faced with the signal of a political breakdown following the disappointment for not going up to the Quirinale?

Although the honeymoon with a part of the press that remains more dragonist than Draghi continues, it is evident that there is a certain tiredness, a weakening of the initial thrust that had led many – even some who today are very critical of Palazzo Chigi – to believe that, after the stammering Contian experience, there would have been a change of pace and an overcoming of the suffocating pandemic bureaucracy that has disintegrated the economic fabric of the country. Instead, Draghi allowed himself to be nailed to the Hope line, in absolute continuity with the previous government. Indeed, the health policy of its executive has proved even more severe and in some respects esoteric because it has preserved and still maintains irritating restrictions while the rest of the Western world has practically reopened all activities and closed the affair. And, the more this line now appears anachronistic and harmful, the more it is pursued, reiterated and prolonged in an exhausting way.

Yet this health intransigence has had a very high cost for the country. The data released by Fipe, the Italian federation of public businesses, are merciless: 45,000 bars and restaurants forced to close, 57 billion burned and almost 200,000 jobs lost. Not to mention tourism devastated by government choices with another Easter ruined by health rules. " We've been looking for it," Minister Garavaglia told La Stampa . “ We could bring forward the rules that will take effect from May 1st by fifteen days, giving people more freedom. Instead we go with the handbrake on, we have limited ourselves ", concluded bitterly the head of tourism who, evidently, was unable to stem the drift caused by a wicked and very obtuse management whose catastrophic results are there for all to see. .

Therefore, talking about the Dragons effect appears quite risky if not paradoxical. Even now that he seems to cling to a functional Atlanticism to hook himself to Biden's muscular position, which thus tries to make us forget the many stumbles that characterized the first phase of his mandate. In short, Super Mario portrays the image of the resolute leader, who also goes against the trend of traditional Italian prudence in international crises. He shows himself ready to absorb the verbal excesses and the inexperience of his foreign minister, to retaliate with his predecessor on the increase in military spending, in what appears to be the most classic game of the parties, to lead the anti-Putin coalition, to field whatever it takes to stop the advance of Russian troops in Eastern Europe except to hand an olive branch to the Kremlin with a phone call highly emphasized by mainstream information. “ It is a bit of a fero and a bit of a feather ”, would have said another Mario who was an actor by trade.

Too bad that, in all this elbowing, there is a complete lack of a political vision, an ideological horizon, a platform on which to build something more concrete than an ephemeral consensus that is also thinning out, as shown by both the polls and some disputes in the streets (l last one in the Rione Sanità of Naples which, albeit over the top, was silenced by most of the press). This year of government did not serve to define the political identity of the former banker who, however, revealed a definitely Christian Democratic soul in the first phase of his government experience, what was to be the springboard to the Quirinale: to please all the majority parties to obtain the coveted prize, even at the cost of transforming the liberal into a director, the reformist into a reactionary, the economist into a virologist. Instead, as we know, things did not go as he imagined for several reasons. The fear of early elections, the desire of the parties to distance themselves from the Demiurge of the situation, the extension of the state of emergency kept him nailed to Palazzo Chigi.

Mind you, Draghi also added his own. The slip of 22 July will remain engraved in the memory of this country: " The Green Pass gives the guarantee of being among non-contagious people ". An improvised sentence denied by the facts and which probably marked the beginning of the decline. And that perhaps made the Draghi effect vanish for good, if it ever existed. Now only the rubble of the pandemic management remains, the disproportionate increases, the NRRR focused on the ecological transition to be reconsidered in the light of recent events, a galloping economic crisis aggravated by the war in Ukraine, the well-founded fear of new property taxes. In this unstoppable descending parable of Draghi there is all the difference that passes between a true leader and "a grandfather at the service of the institutions", between a strategist and a tactician, between a man with magical powers presented as the savior of the homeland (not only football) and the icy technocrat forced to drag the burden of a legislature kept alive only by emergencies. Basically, his nemesis. Its avenue of sunset.

The post Draghi Effect vanished or never existed? The unstoppable descent of the premier appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .


This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/effetto-draghi-svanito-o-mai-esistito-linarrestabile-parabola-discendente-del-premier/ on Sat, 02 Apr 2022 03:52:00 +0000.