Enrico Letta, secretary of the Democratic Party, a political organization that we could define as the Italian institutional center-left, died at the end of last August in Rimini, on the shores of the Adriatic. The electoral results of last Sunday have done nothing more than confirm an announced end.
Since Letta, who has decided to resign from office promptly and honestly, appears today as the main victim of an electoral upset that is making headlines around the world, it may be interesting to explain what has happened behind the scenes. Nuances and details are always essential to capture what happens in Italy.
“I am convinced that the next government, whatever its political color, will manage to overcome the difficulties that now seem enormous to us, as we have overcome them a year ago. Also this time, Italy will come out ahead”. August 24. Words by Mario Draghi at the annual meeting that Communion and Liberation organizes each summer in Rimini, a city with one of the longest beaches on the Adriatic coast and the birthplace of the filmmaker Federico Fellini, an artist who today would smile when he saw Giorgia Meloni playing with a couple of melons
Rimini is a happy place and Communion and Liberation is a conservative Catholic movement that is currently in a low hour, since Pope Francis does not share much with its ideas. Every summer, Communion and Liberation organizes a great forum in which the main political and economic personalities of the country take part. Rimini is landmark at the end of August.
And there was Draghi. The most respected man in Italy came to say that a government apparently contrary to his would be on the right track. Without needing to be more explicit, since everyone present knew how to interpret politichese, the wooden language of power, he came to say that the situation was under control despite the prevailing excitement. Vote however you want that the security mesh has already been deployed.
That day Enrico Letta died. The secretary of the Democratic Party, a man of Christian Democratic extraction, not a social democrat, as is sometimes written in Spain, wanted to go to the elections with the Draghi flag. We are not writing the portrait of a naive person. Letta grasped the danger of the latest government crisis from the start. "Very serious situation," he confessed to La Vanguardia shortly after learning, at the end of July, that the government of national unity was entering into serious difficulties.
With the crisis over, the Democratic Party sought an alliance with four medium-sized, low-calorie parties: the centrists of Carlo Calenda (Action), the eco-socialists of Nicola Frattoiani, the former radicals grouped around the inexhaustible Emma Bonino, plus the party of pocket of Luigi Di Maio, recently split from the 5 Star Movement. With that troop they wanted to face the powerful artillery of the triple right, well connected with popular unrest. Letta believed that Draghi could be an effective banner: the coalition of seriousness against the coalition led by the extreme right.
After two days the mountebank Calenda abandoned him. And after a few more days, the prime minister made Rimini's pronouncement, which today we can translate without difficulty: if Meloni wins, don't worry, since she will also know how to lead the country forward. Draghi only raised one veto: Matteo Salvini (League), a man in the hands of Russia.
That day, August 24, the Democratic Party was isolated before an electoral law of majority bias. There was no longer time to seek a pact with Giuseppe Conte's 5 Star Movement. That pact, Letta would surely have worked on at the end of the legislature, in the spring of 2023. She needed time.
The right knew it and therefore took advantage of Draghi's anger with part of his ministers to accelerate the fall of the Executive and force elections. The prime minister did not work hard to avoid it, according to all the sources consulted by this newspaper in Italy. The former president of the European Central Bank was angry. He had been promised the presidency of the Republic and had been denied it in the January conclave. Draghi was not kidding when tensions rose within the concentration government. He didn't mind leaving.
Over the past year, he had cultivated a somewhat trusting relationship with the only voice in the opposition: Giorgia Meloni. "Both have spoken many times and he considers her a serious person," says a source very close to the former prime minister, who confirms what is already an open secret in Italy: Draghi will mediate in favor of the new Italian government in Washington and Brussels , if Meloni does not cross certain red lines and, above all, remains loyal to the Atlantic Alliance.
Enrico Letta was unable to see him in time. And if he saw it, he didn't want to move in another direction.
