From rome
The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Roberto Fico, announced this Tuesday that the Italian Parliament will meet on January 24 to vote for the new President of the Republic. In Italy the president is elected by the members of Parliament (321 senators and 630 deputies) and the regions (58) and not by popular vote as in Argentina. It is still not clear, however, who the possible candidates will be. Three names appear repeatedly on the list: the current prime minister Mario Draghi, the former center-right prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and the current president Sergio Mattarella. But there is also talk of the possibility that, for the first time in history, a woman could be elected president.
The Republic of Italy, born after World War II in 1946, never had a female president. His parliamentary system It has been quite macho. Currently women occupy half of the positions that men occupy, both in the Senate and in the Chamber of Deputies.
Although it should be noted that a woman who fought in the anti-fascist resistance, like Nilde Iotti, was one of the first women to enter Parliament as a deputy in 1948. Nilde Iotti, a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was also the first female president of the Chamber of Deputies where she was from 1972 to 1992. She was a candidate for the presidency of the republic in 1992, supported by her party, the Partido Democrático della Izquierda (PDS ex PCI), but was not elected. Other women have been candidates in these decades for the Presidency of the Republic, among them Emma Bonino of the Radical Party, and Rosa Russo Iervolino, of the Democratic Party. But they never made it to office.
The Italian norms establish that the election of the new president is made 30 days before the end of the period of the mandatory antecedent that lasts seven years. The regulations also establish that the president must be elected with two-thirds of the total votes of Parliament and the regional representatives (673 votes), in the first, second or third ballot. If a fourth vote is reached because the necessary number was not reached, an absolute majority is sufficient, that is, 505 votes.
Apparently Emma Bonino, current senator and former deputy, would run again as a candidate for the presidency. But there is also talk of other women such as the current Minister of Justice, Marta Cartabia, former president of the Constitutional Court; of the former Minister of Justice and current Vice President of Luiss – a prestigious private university-, Paola Severino, and of Maria Elisabetta Casellati, current president of the Senate and close to Forza Italia de Berlusconi.
The ultra-right of Fratelli d’Italia apparently thatI would like to promote the candidacy of Letizia Moratti, former Minister of Education and former Mayor of Milan. The center-left, on the other hand, would be in favor of the former president of the Senate, Anna Finocchiario, or Rosy Bindi, who was Minister of Health and former vice president of the Chamber of Deputies, among other candidates.
The question that many are asking, however, is whether Italy, a country where there are still pronounced differences between men and women (for example at the labor level and in the salaries of certain companies), is prepared to have a woman president. Fortunately, what is happening in several European countries is helping some to become aware of the sense of responsibility and capacity of women. This is the case of countries such as Germany, Estonia, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Slovakia, which currently have or have had until recently, female prime ministers or presidents.
Being president in Italy does not have the same role as in Argentina. In Italy, the prime minister is the one who runs the government. But it will be the president who will decide and coordinate the parties in the event of a government crisis, and who will call for new elections in case of need.
The candidate men
Of the three most named candidates in recent days, Berlusconi, Draghi y MattarellaDraghi, former president of the European Central Bank and who knows the European Union as his home, is the best candidate for many who have also appreciated his work as an independent coordinator in this terrible historical period in Italy and in the world with the pandemic. But others think that he would prefer to remain prime minister, something that the right-wing sectors above all cannot wait to finish in order to be able to run for his people or call for new elections. Berlusconi is nominated by his own party, Forza Italia, but in principle with the support of Mateo Salvini’s La Liga. But according to some versions, the extreme right of Fratelli d’Italia led by Giorgia Meloni would have serious doubts about that candidacy.
Mattarella’s reelection is proposed by the Five Star Movement (M5S) while in the center left there does not seem to be a single candidate. The Democratic Party seems to want to promote the candidacy of Paolo Gentiloni, currently the European Commissioner for Economic Affairs. Other left-wing parties would prefer Pier Luigi Bersani, a former minister in several center-left governments but also a former secretary of the PD from which he left in 2017.
Voting in Parliament will begin on the 24th at three in the afternoon, but it is not known how many votes can be taken per day given the strict security measures that the Chambers have imposed due to the hallucinatory growth of infections by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus that on Tuesday produced 170,000 infections and 259 deaths. Perhaps the voters will be able to enter to vote according to pre-established hours and only for the time necessary to write the name of the person voted and place the vote in the ballot box.
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