Stefan Zweig recounts in Stellar Moments of Humanity: “In Rome, Cicero finds himself a confused, dismayed and disoriented city. From the moment Julius Caesar is assassinated, he is revealed to be greater than the perpetrators of it. The motley clique of the conspirators has not known how to do anything other than assassinate, nothing more than to eliminate that man superior to them. But now that they have to take advantage of that action, they are left helpless not knowing what to do. Senators waver over whether to approve or condemn the assassination."
The moment is quite similar to what Italy is experiencing at this time. The resignation of Mario Draghi, whom the president of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, commissioned a unity government 17 months ago, with a significant presence of technocrats, makes no sense. Draghi has been a magnificent prime minister: his successful management of the pandemic, the impetus for the country's recovery after defining the priority of 20,000 million in European funds, the recovery of the influence of Italy, which has become a preferred partner of France and Germany and even a more supportive immigration policy made him little less than a superhero. The EU saw in Super Mario, as his colleagues called him, an element of stability and a guarantee of rigor.
Why is Draghi resigning? Well, because the 5 Star Movement voted against the decree of economic measures to alleviate the effects of inflation. The crisis that this formation is experiencing has been paid for by the prime minister and, despite the fact that Mattarella did not accept his resignation, a new vote in the Senate where the League, Forza Italia and the M5E did not participate when the reforms promised to the EU were to be approved to access the recovery funds, was final. Draghi's departure precipitates the elections, gives Giorgia Meloni's extreme right an opportunity, throws the country into disarray and makes Vladimir Putin rub his hands.
Zweig writes that the conspirators against Julius Caesar were only able to hatch a plot, but did not know what to do next. More or less like now, the story always comes back.
