But what game is Beppe Grillo playing?
What is Beppe Grillo doing. The Scratches of Damato
More than a departure from Rome, at the end of a mission that wanted to be one of reconnaissance and order as founder and guarantor of the 5 Star Movement after the split by Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, that of Beppe Grillo appeared to be an escape. Which, among other things, blew up an appointment that he had already given to the pentastellate delegation to the government. But of a government that Grillo himself practiced brought to the brink of a crisis, even if excluded, perhaps with excessive optimism, by Mario Draghi.
The latter, still on a mission at that moment in Madrid for the NATO summit, found himself displaced – to say the least – by the version of a strong and overwhelming anti-contism attributed to him, between jokes, allusions and denials, by the Genoese comedian. Yet Grillo's Roman reconnaissance had begun with such a defense of the Draghi government that it generally appeared controversial with the president's temptations to disengage what remained of the pentastellato movement.
The hot comment written in the Huffington Post by the editor Mattia Feltri with this title does not seem frankly exaggerated: "The autumn of the Patriarch: The melancholy decline of Grillo and his worn repertoire", also made up of confidences and allusions with his interlocutors of turn that end up in the newspapers and survive his laughter of denial. This is what happened in recent days with the sociologist Domenico De Masi, who hastened to report to the Fatto Quotidiano , which boasted the usual scoop , of one and perhaps even more phone calls from Draghi to Grillo to urge him to "kill" Conte. That Marco Travaglio, already author of an alleged " Conticide " which took place last year with his removal from Palazzo Chigi, did not seem true to present to readers both as a wanted man and as a victim, in a photomontage on the front page from far west .
For Conte, for his part, it did not seem true to ride this comedy – or tragicomedy – introducing himself to journalists to confirm rumors and so on about Draghi's maneuvers against him, and even asking for, and obtaining, an audience at the Quirinale from a president of the Republic of which the bewilderment is imaginable.
Draghi, in anticipating his return to Rome from Madrid also to chair a Council of Ministers today aimed above all at confirming the vitality of his government, denied phone calls and anything else attributed to Grillo against Conte. Which, moreover, the Prime Minister had not lacked his explicit and frank dissent when he went to propose things he did not share, or to protest against the increase in military spending agreed with NATO already when the Count himself was driving the government. On that occasion Draghi also took care to go up to the Quirinale to complain about the position of the president of the movement that was then most represented in Parliament.
In this situation, frankly unprecedented in the long history of the Italian Republic, and in the finally conclusive stretch of the legislature that began in 2018 with the "centrality" conquered by the 5 Stars in the polls, not even the cartoon in which Il Foglio imagined a Draghi who claims his political nature as prime minister and downgrades Conte's presumed leadership to "technical". Which, in fact, could no longer be delegitimized by the "guarantor" Grillo in a mission that was a bit of a show. And with all the problems the country is facing, including those of a – real – war opened by Putin against Ukraine but which is increasingly involving the whole of Europe and an even wider NATO than before.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/ma-a-che-gioco-sta-giocando-beppe-grillo/ on Thu, 30 Jun 2022 14:13:18 +0000.