An Argentinian, lifeline of the Italian government?

In addition to a tragic pandemic that has claimed more than 80,000 deaths and produced the worst post-war economic and social crisis, Italy is facing a difficult and absurd political crisis after the withdrawal of the Italia Viva party of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi from the ruling coalition.

In a parliamentary country, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte must be presented to cameras for explanation. On Monday, it will be up to MPs when, after the confidence vote debate, they vote for MPs, where the government apparently has a secure majority. Tuesday, he will submit to the vote that the fall of the government and its political existence could cost him.

“Conte will win,” he said Bugle Italian Senator and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ricardo Merlo, Argentinian and founder of MAIE, the main movement of Italians abroad. Merlo turned his group into “May-Italia 2023” to make it an engine to support Conte and guarantee its survival in two years, when the cycle of the current legislature is completed.

Merlo does not give figures because he does not expect a large victory for the Prime Minister in the Senate, where the withdrawal of 18 senators from Renzi’s group has left the government in a minority. The magic number 161 represents the absolute majority. It is very difficult for Conte to achieve this.

In the past, we remember no less than ten governments born by simple majority and chaired by personalities who made the history of the republic born from the ruins of fascism and the Second World War.

This narrow conviction of victory is in the air and erases any vagueness of triumphalism within the government. The undersecretary of the center-left Democratic Party, in alliance with the 5 Star Movement, Andrea Orlanda, admitted that “it is not enough to win by one vote”. It is necessary “Bringing a Legislature Pact to life” until 2023, when the current parliamentary cycle will end.

The isolation into which former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi fell, who broke with the Democratic Party and founded his own political force, is striking. “It’s crazy to have a crisis in a country which suffers from a pandemic which costs five or six hundred deaths per day”Explained Merlo.

“In addition, the Conte government has obtained grants and credits of 209 billion euros from the European Union and has now created a stimulus package of 310 billion euros, adding other European funds. How can you think the time has come to remove Conte and wait for EU collaboration, ”Merlo added.

To support the government, in addition to the Maie-Italia 2023 initiative which would add a good quota of senators to form the simple majority that Conte needs, the prime minister is looking for the “builders” which should allow you to avoid jumping into the abyss. He can only look to the center, looking for those who are in the mixed group or in the Catholic areas, like the UCD which is formally allied with the center-right opposition.

The Church is known to act quietly to ensure the survival of the government in Tuesday’s vote. A few days ago, the Pope criticized Matteo Renzi’s breakup without naming him. He said that in such a difficult time, political unity was essential.

It is evident that Conte’s quest for “builders” to support him comes at a high political price. The government will not come out of this crisis unscathed, must make political concessions, open spaces and guarantee its new partners that they will count in the national reorganization plan, the other name of the legislative pact, which will be supported by the central axis of the recovery plan embellished with a mountain of several million dollars unprecedented where public works, new development models and modernization companies that Italy urgently needs to get out of the economic and social swamp in which it has entered due to the pandemic.

Clemente Mastella, the old wolf of Italian politics, who was a top Christian Democracy leader and minister during the many years of the DC government, is one of those courted by Prime Minister Conte.

Although he is not a legislator, Mastella has concrete influences in the field of ex-Catholic Christians. He sent Conte a warning for the rise, warning the prime minister that “we are responsible but the chickens are not.” Mastella is mayor of Benevento, in the heart of southern Italy, a city for which he wants to guarantee a future. His wife Alessandrina Lonardo is a senator and now lives in the mixed group after leaving Forza Italia led by Silvio Berlusconi, one of the three center-right opposition parties that according to all polls would win if there were early elections.

The conquest of the majority turns out to be transpired. Not just because of political quarrels. The dimensions of the combination between the deadly pandemic and the economic and social crisis have a negative impact on the future. Going forward will cost a titanic and historic effort. The blow that Prime Minister Conte received from ally Matteo Renzi has caused wounds that will be expensive to heal, even if he passes the parliamentary test.