Italian President Sergio Mattarella re-elected for second term, ending successor row

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Saturday, January 29, 2022

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Sergio Mattarella on December 30, 2021.
Image: Quirinale.

President of Italy Sergio Mattarella was re-elected for a second seven-year term today in the eighth round of voting for a potential successor.

Aged 80, Mattarella repeatedly expressed his desire to leave the position after his first term was set to expire on February 3, including renting an apartment in Rome in anticipation of a move from the presidential Quirinal Palace (Quirinale). However, he relented after key figures, including Prime Minister Mario Draghi, urged him to stay on for the "stability" of the Republic.

Parliamentarians who went to Quirinale to ask him to remain quoted Mattarella as saying "I had other plans, but if needed, I am at your disposition", after seven rounds of fraught voting among an electoral college of 1009 "grand electors": 321 Senators, 630 Members of the Chamber of Deputies (MPs) and 58 regional delegates, failed to choose a successor.

Reuters characterised Parliament's failure to rally around a compromise candidate as leaving "deep scars, with potentially dangerous repercussions for political stability" in the Draghi-led party coalition. The agency added there was "loud and prolonged applause" in the Chamber of Deputies when Mattarella did break the two-thirds majority needed to secure re-election, winning a total of 759 votes.

Party leaders' statements issued today were generally in favour of Mattarella staying in power. Matteo Salvini, leader of anti-migrant party Lega per Salvini Premier, said "Italians don't deserve more days of confusion", confirming "President Mattarella at the Quirinale and Draghi at the government". Draghi, himself a candidate who was "tipped for the job" according to Agence France-Presse (AFP), said after the election it was "splendid news for Italians" and he was "grateful to the President for his decision to go along with the extremely strong will of Parliament".

Salvini, who Euronews says is eyeing the role of Prime Minister, expressed his desire for Mattarella to continue serving yesterday evening after none of his candidates received the requisite majority of votes: "We think that it isn't serious any more to continue with 'no's' and cross vetoes", and he believed the time was right to "tell the president to reconsider". Mattarella also gained post-election support in messages by Enrico Lotta, who heads the centre-left Democratic Party, Minister of Health Roberto Speranza, who leads social democracy party Article One and former Prime Minister, candidate and president of centre-right party Forza Italia Silvio Berlusconi.

However, the decision was sharply criticised by Giorgio Meloni, the leader of far-right opposition party Brothers of Italy, who said in a statement "Parliament has shown it is not fit for Italians", having accused allies of "bartering away" the role of the presidency and calling for the bloc to be "re-founded". Meloni tweeted this evening "I would be surprised if #Mattarella agreed to be re-elected after having repeatedly rejected this hypothesis." She instead favoured Draghi, who was president of the European Central Bank during the European debt crisis, to take the office, which would leave the Prime Minister's seat vacant and potentially invoke early elections.

Giuseppe Conte, leader of Parliament's largest party the populist Five Star Movement who resigned as Prime Minister in 2021, told reporters "Mattarella is the guarantor of everybody, impartial, authoritative". Though mostly ceremonial, the President is in charge of appointing the Prime Minister and dissolving Parliament, which the BBC says means the office "takes on great power during times of political crisis" and the fragmentation of Italian politics.

Mattarella was praised for his action in appointing the broad coalition of parties led by independent career economist Draghi to manage the country's response to Covid-19 amid Italy's worst economic disaster in decades, ending the brief 2021 Italian government crisis. Italy's instability means governments typically survive one year. Wolfango Piccoli of advisory firm Teneo told Reuters: "The overall political backdrop has become less supportive for Draghi's government, which is facing a daunting task in the year or so left before the next general election", planned for 2023.

BBC Rome correspondent Mark Lowen indicated the decision to re-elect a hesitant incumbent instead of its first female president or someone younger (although candidates must be over 50) would "be seen by critics as an embarrassing show of Italy's political divisions and the lack of imagination of its MPs to think beyond the status quo." Support for Mattarella was supposedly the only thing most MPs agreed on, according to a BBC interview with Forza Italia national co-ordinator Antonio Tajani.

Mattarella, seen as a traditional but quiet and unassuming President according to Reuters, was first elected in 2015, having previously served as Minister of Public Education, Minister of Defence, Deputy Prime Minister and judge of the Constitutional Court during his two decades as MP beginning in 1983. His father helped found the Christian Democracy party, while his brother Piersanti Mattarella served as President of Sicily before being assassinated in 1980.

Other candidates for the post indicated by the AFP last week included former Prime Ministers Giuliano Amato and Paolo Gentiloni, former Chamber of Deputies President Pier Ferdinando Casini, and females, like current and former Ministers of Justice Marta Cartabia and Paola Severino and Senate President Elisabetta Casellati.


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