Opening their parliamentary mailboxes last month, Italian lawmakers were surprised to find an anthology of speeches by Silvio Berlusconi. This was the opening gambit in his undeclared campaign for president
Why? A president spends much of his time making speeches, conferring honours and receiving dignitaries. He has some weighty powers, including responsibility for dissolving parliament and appointing the prime minister. But those powers are few.
Either way, the odds on a snap election will shorten, and if an early vote is held, the polls currently suggest that the outcome would be a coalition government dominated by two parties with a track record of confrontation with the European Commission: the Brothers of Italy party, whose roots lie in neo-fascism, and the populist Northern League. Within Italy, the risks of that tend to be downplayed. Not so elsewhere.
Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers and Matteo Salvini of the League are both nominally supportive of their ally, Mr Berlusconi. But it is clear their interests actually lie in ushering Mr Draghi upstairs. Whether he, and they, will get their way is another matter: a solution that allows Mr Draghi to stay on as prime minister with minimal loss of face may yet be found.
Perhaps most important of all is the instinct for self-preservation, both political and financial, of Italy’s lawmakers. Because of a reform in 2019, the next parliament will have around two-thirds the number of seats of the current one. And if the next election is held before September 24th 2022, the first-time parliamentarians among them will lose their rights to a pension.
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