Silvio Berlusconi does not take a step backwards as he presents himself in the Chamber with a half-empty room facing a stark alternative: either you vote for confidence or we go to the elections.
After two yellow cards arrived from the Quirinale, this morning Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi essentially tries to get out of the corner, asking yet another confidence in the House. He does it in a half-full (or half-empty, depending on one's point of view) classroom because all of them the oppositions leave the sandbars when he starts to speak: a way to show the whole world the anomaly of the Italian situation with a Government which, after seeing the report was rejected in Parliament state, did not resign. Tomorrow, however, the opposition deputies will participate in the vote.
The two interventions of the President of the Republic that characterized yesterday, and occurred within a few hours, are very clear. In the first, the head of state places the problem of its credibility, even beyond the "repeated" votes of confidence that the Government has obtained. Napolitano, given that the rejection of the report has obvious "institutional repercussions", wants to know if the Government is able to fulfill the commitments it has agreed on, including at an international level. In short, a problem is posed not only of the quantity of the majority, but also of quality and ability to govern. One way to recall the fact that so far neither the decree for growth, nor the indication of the Governor of the Bank of Italy have materialized.
The second intervention by the Quirinale came after the Giunta for the Montecitorio regulation had ruled for the forfeiture of the entire report after the rejection of article 1, confirming that that passage was an unamendable due act. Subsequently, a meeting of the group leaders also took place which gave the go-ahead for today's speech by Berlusconi, but with the oppositions reiterating that the government's resignation was the only institutionally viable path. At that point Fini went to Napolitano to explain to him the situation that has arisen and above all the requests of the oppositions.
The head of state then, with an official note, first thanked Fini for having gone to the hill (a way of pointing out that others hadn't taken this trouble instead) and then put pen to paper that to get out of the impasse on the report it will be Berlusconi, in his speech on trust, having to indicate “the solution that can correctly lead to the approval of the report".
A solution that will probably be indicated in this morning's Council of Ministers. Some ministers spoke of the rewriting of article 1 to be submitted to the approval of the Parliament. Solution that has no precedents, given that in similar cases the prime ministers defeated on the approval of the report had resigned a minute later.
