Italy will hold fresh national elections on September 25th after Prime Minister Mario Draghi gave his resignation on Thursday, ending the globalist national unity government that controlled Italy through the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
The Italian Council of Ministers decided on the date of September 25th on Thursday just hours after Prime Minister Draghi handed his resignation to Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
“As you know, this morning I resigned in the hands of the President of the Republic, who took note of it, asking to remain in office for current affairs. I want to thank first of all the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, for the trust he has placed in me and for the wisdom with which he has managed this phase of crisis,” Prime Minister Draghi said on Thursday, Il Giornale reports.
“I want to thank you all, for the dedication, generosity, and pragmatism that you have shown in recent months. We must be very proud of the work we have done, in the wake of the mandate of the President of the Republic, at the service of all citizens,” he added.
Before becoming Prime Minister of Italy, Draghi was the President of the European Central Bank, and had been the Governor of the Bank of Italy. He was installed by the Italian President in 2021 to lead a technocratic, unelected government as the president believed it would be too unsafe to hold fresh elections during a pandemic.
Draghi is hardly the first technocratic government in Italy, imposing a top European Union official on the Italian government to rule it without elections: Mario Monti, a European Commissioner was installed in a similar way in 2011 to deal with the fallout of the 2008 economic crisis. Carlo Ciampi, appointed directly to the office of Prime Minister from being the governor of the Bank of Italy also led a technocratic government in 1993.
Draghi’s resignation come just under a week after the had first offered to resign due to the Five Star Movement (M5S) abstaining from a confidence vote last week. While Draghi was able to win a confidence vote in the Italian Senate on Wednesday, he chose to resign Thursday.
In the days leading up to Draghi’s resignation, the centre-right Forza Italia led by Silvio Berlusconi and the populist League led by Matteo Salvini offered to keep the national government afloat if Draghi kicked the M5S out of the national coalition, however, the offer was declined.
“If the goal is to save the country, the first scenario is to take note that the M5S is no longer part of the majority of the government of national unity,” League Senate group leader Massimiliano Romeo stated on Wednesday.
“We need to rebuild a new pact, we are there but it means a new majority and we need to rebuild a new government with new objectives, even a little more ambitious,” he added.
Enrico Letta, former Prime Minister and current secretary of the leftist Democratic Party (PD) predicted the government would fall and stated, “I believe that we will go to the elections quickly, and I believe that Italians will choose between those who wanted to sink this experience of government and those who instead genuinely tried, beyond their own partisan interests, to carry it forward.”
Current polling shows the PD behind the national-conservative Brother of Italy (FdI) led by firebrand conservative Giorgia Meloni with a pool giving the FdI 23.8 per cent of the vote. The FdI was the only major party not to take part in the national unity coalition.
Meloni commented after the fall of the Draghi government saying, “We have had three different governments with three different majorities. Is there one that worked? No. Because the only governments that work are those with a cohesive majority.”