After a last-ditch attempt to revive Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s majority failed, Italy’s president summoned Mr. Draghi, the ex-head of the European Central Bank, to discuss leading Italy through the coronavirus emergency.
ROME — The high-stakes negotiations to resolve Italy’s political crisis in the midst of a pandemic took a remarkable turn on Tuesday evening when the country’s president summoned Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, to begin talks to form a new government.
The development all but officially sounded the death knell on the tenure of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, a previously unknown lawyer who had managed, with great ideological dexterity, to survive as Italy’s leader for more than two years and two governments, the first an alliance of hard-right nationalists and anti-establishment populists, the second with populists and the center-left establishment.
Mr. Conte’s coalition government, which had brought together the populist Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party, collapsed last month when a once-popular former prime minister and ex-leader of the Democratic Party, Matteo Renzi, pulled the support of his small but essential party, Italia Viva.
Mr. Renzi, an ambitious politician unsatisfied with Mr. Conte’s performance and bothered by his cold shoulder, argued that the coalition government’s incompetence, undemocratic tendencies and lingering populist reluctance to use all the bailout funds made available by the European Union risked exacerbating the damage of Italy’s already catastrophic Covid crisis.
Nearly 90,000 Italians have died from Covid-19 and the country is in economic shambles after a series of lockdowns to slow the spread of the virus.
Throughout Tuesday, talks drew on to find a solution to the political crisis. At several points in recent days, efforts to resurrect Mr. Conte’s leadership of his third government in a row seemed plausible, with Five Star appearing ready to submit to Mr. Renzi’s demands for more influence in a significant cabinet reshuffle.
But on Tuesday, after many hours of negotiations between party leaders, Mr. Renzi, whose support was necessary for the resurrection of the government, publicly criticized it for its vaccine rollout and failure to get enough students back in schools. He could not be appeased, and Mr. Conte was history.
Instead, Mr. Draghi, the pie-in-the-sky wish of many of Italy’s most European Union-friendly politicians, seemed poised to replace him.
Mr. Draghi comes to the table as one of Italy’s highest-profile international officials and a stalwart defender of the bloc. He is credited with easing interest rates and proclaiming in 2012 that he would do “whatever it takes” to save the euro as the Central Bank’s president during the eurozone debt crisis. Months later, he promised unlimited purchases of eurozone government bonds to deeply indebted countries, including Italy, effectively relieving crushing financial pressure.
By officially bringing in Mr. Draghi as a potential leader in a critical moment, Italy seemed poised to return to the model of the technocratic government that has the reputation of bailing out the country when its political forces fail. During the eurozone economic crisis, the prime minister at the time, Silvio Berlusconi, was forced out to make way for Mario Monti, another well-respected technocrat, who did the unpopular economic dirty work to get Italy out of trouble.
Sergio Mattarella, Italy’s president, who is imbued with extraordinary powers during a political crisis, made it clear on Tuesday night that he saw that — and not early elections — as the way out of Italy’s duress.
“I have the duty to emphasize that the long period of electoral campaigning, and the resulting reduction of government activity, would coincide with a crucial moment for Italy’s fate,” Mr. Mattarella said in a televised address. Referring to more than 200 billion euros, or about $241 billion, in pandemic relief funds that the European Union had allocated to Italy, he continued, “We cannot afford to miss this fundamental chance for our future.”
His office then said it had asked Mr. Draghi to meet with the president on Wednesday to see if he could put together a technocratic government with the support of a political majority.
The news of Mr. Draghi’s entrance into the arena delighted some of Italy’s most pro-European politicians and those critical of Mr. Conte’s lack of experience.
“Thank you Mr. President,” a former center-left prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, who is now serving as a top official in the European Union, wrote on Twitter.
Teresa Bellanova, a leading member of Mr. Renzi’s small party, also seemed amenable to Mr. Draghi, thanking Mr. Mattarella for his “sense of responsibility” and adding that her party would do its part “in this delicate moment.”
But Mr. Renzi had already demonstrated, again and again, that he is unpredictable, to say the least.
It was his unexpected gambit that prompted the government crisis and then days of tense talks. Mr. Renzi seemed on board with finding a new governing majority, even under Mr. Conte. And then he wasn’t.
“Matteo Renzi started to veto everything,” Vito Crimi, the political leader of the populist Five Star Movement, complained to reporters on Tuesday evening. He argued that Mr. Renzi was more focused on getting seats in government than safeguarding the country.
Mr. Crimi later added, however, that Five Star, which, despite hemorrhaging public support, still controls the largest number of seats in Parliament of any party, “will not vote for a technical government chaired by Mario Draghi.”
It is not clear yet whether Mr. Draghi will receive sufficient political support to govern. But the impact of his landing on the Italian political scene had already threatened to further break up Five Star, as it was not clear that the once-popular party, which dreads early elections, would uniformly vote against him.
That in itself was another victory for Mr. Renzi, who blamed Five Star for a demonization campaign that helped bring down his own government in 2016.
With little electoral support to lose — he’s down to about 2 percent in polls — Mr. Renzi has worked the levers of power and acted as a vengeful political hit man, or, his supporters say, as the artist of a political masterwork. On Tuesday evening he added Mr. Conte’s scalp to his collection of political opponents, which also include the nationalist leader Matteo Salvini, whom he iced out of power in 2019 — by a surprise show of support for Five Star and Mr. Conte.
Mr. Salvini, and other right-wing popular leaders, have argued that the demise of Mr. Conte, and the lack of a broad political consensus, should lead to new and early elections, which polls show they would likely win.
But while Mr. Salvini maintained his now rote calls for early elections, the country’s most politically attuned populist was also careful not to seem overly critical of Mr. Draghi. He said his party, the League, would make proposals on Mr. Draghi’s eventual agenda, which he said, should be “filled with content, things to do.”
Mr. Mattarella’s decision to summon Mr. Draghi followed a meeting Tuesday evening with the speaker of the lower house, Roberto Fico, who had been tasked last week to determine whether Italy’s bickering government could overcome a vast array of political differences that had led to the collapse last month of Mr. Conte’s 17-month-old government.
Mr. Fico advised Italy’s president Tuesday evening that he had failed.
Mr. Conte had failed as well in weeks of desperate attempts to cobble together enough support from a loose assortment of lawmakers to stay in power.
On Tuesday night, Mr. Conte, whom Five Star had plucked from obscurity only two years ago to lead the country, already seemed to fade away.
“Beyond all the arguments, of who won and lost, the substance of the situation is that in the most difficult and dramatic situation we can imagine, we pass from the hands of Conte to those of Draghi,” Mario Calabresi, who edited two of Italy’s leading papers, wrote on Twitter. “I’m going to sleep soundly. You?”
Elisabetta Povoledo, Gaia Pianigiani and Emma Bubola contributed reporting.
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