What (not) happens between the center-right and center-left on the Quirinale
The Quirinale match between meetings, leaders and names. Paola Sacchi's note
“Exclude Draghi and Casini? I was not born to exclude ”, Matteo Salvini replies to the reporters, at the end of a day in which the third ballot for the Quirinale ended with a black smoke. Negotiation night. But Salvini's response, reported by the Dire news agency, does not mean that those are the names that the League and the center-right want. But they are still the two names that the Montecitorio stock exchange gives on the eve of today's fourth vote where an absolute majority is expected.
During the night, Enrico Letta foresees that even today there will be a blank ballot. And the decisive day instead could be tomorrow, Friday. The secretary of the Democratic Party also ascribes a victory, that of having "foiled" the hypothesis of the President of the Senate Elisabetta Casellati who, according to him, would have "blown" the government. Read, however, in the face of Salvini who claims that the "country cannot be held hostage by the vetoes of the Democratic Party", at this point speaks of "a solution that is not partisan". Therefore, according to the words of the secretary of the Democratic Party, it should not be of the right but not even of the left. Letta, however, stops on this aspect: "We will not have a right-wing president".
This morning at 8.30 the center-right will decide whether to go to the count in the classroom, trying, as it seems to urge Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy in particular, to pass an area name, "after 30 years that the Head of State" comes from left ”(Salvini also recalled), or to try to find a shared solution to the end. Salvini, tireless in his role of mediation, who also receives the blessing of Umberto Bossi ("He is learning"), underlines that while the Democratic Party "does not make proposals", the center-right coalition is ready to make other high-profile names, in addition to backhoe proposed the day before yesterday. Among the high profile names also that of the constitutionalist Sabino Cassese, who is not a right-wing man but had said he was in agreement with the presidential reform.
Here is a little mystery of the quirinal negotiations: according to the newspaper Il Foglio , Salvini himself met Cassese yesterday afternoon in his home in Parioli, but Salvini denied: “I don't know where Cassese lives. And anyway, today I wasn't in Parioli ”. But the denial does not dispel the yellow. The director of the sheet Claudio Cerasa: “Overconfirmed”.
In the evening, the leader of the League gathers his people who welcome him with a standing ovation and give him full mandate to negotiate on the name for the Quirinale. Salvini hears himself on the phone for a long time even with Silvio Berlusconi. And Antonio Tajani, number two of Forza Italia, says: "Berlusconi wants a center-right name."
Yesterday evening ends late with this question: blank card also for the center-right or will we count on a name? And if in the end Berlusconi himself returns to the field? Of course this is just a very theoretical hypothesis, which invokes some blue. But in the night of the endless negotiation, in which everyone meets everyone, all the hypotheses arise, at the end of a day that actually ends, once again, without fixed points.
And in the background, despite the repeated denials of the Head of State, the hypothesis of the Mattarella bis still remains. It is no coincidence that Letta seems to say “we must preserve Draghi whatever role he has”, so does he also take into consideration the hypothesis that the premier remains in government? And in this case the Democratic Party with the Five Stars would in fact support the reconfirmation of the Mattarella-Draghi ticket?
Meanwhile, at night, Letta, after all the no, even tranchant said to the center-right, while no longer having the necessary numbers on the left, summarizes: “It's all in the air, but not our fault”. Today we start again. As? Quirinale, a challenge for the center-right but also for the summit of the Democratic Party itself. Tested in its capacity to legitimize the political opponent. After almost 30 years of bipolarity.
Finally, at the end of this morning's summit, the center-right announces its willingness to vote for a name of “high institutional value”. But for today there will be abstention from the great voters of Lega, FI and FdI.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/matteo-salvini-quirinale-draghi-casini/ on Thu, 27 Jan 2022 06:39:03 +0000.