The first vote of the Parliament in joint session will be held on 24 January at 3.00 pm to elect Sergio Mattarella’s successor at the Quirinale. The convocation, as expected, was made yesterday morning by the President of the Chamber Roberto Fico, who also wrote to the 20 regional councils to elect the 58 regional delegates who together with the deputies and senators will form the college of 1009 electors. A figure that raises concern to Montecitorio due to problems of gathering, which in the meantime is preparing to rearrange the voting stations in the Transatlantic and provide sanitation breaks of an hour and a half every three hours (in recent times the sanitation took place only at the end of the session) for the votes that await the deputies from next week until 24 January. The obligation to wear the Ffp2 mask will also be introduced, according to the Presidency of the Chamber, for all those who frequent the Palazzo.
As regards the election of the Head of State, the situation is under continuous monitoring, even in the face of the increase in cases of impeded parliamentarians (it is estimated that as of January 24th there will be about a hundred), at the moment the decision to proceed remains firm. with only one vote per day and staggering the attendance in the Chamber in alphabetical order so as not to accommodate more than 200 people in the hemicycle. But from Pd, through Walter Verini and Stefano Ceccanti, we insist on finding other solutions: if not the electronic vote of each parliamentarian in his or her office, at least let the senators in Palazzo Madama and the deputies in Montecitorio vote. The two deputies warn against cutting out parliamentarians “unable to vote because they are sick with Covid or in quarantine.” And Ceccanti goes so far as to quote Don Ferrante of the Promessi Sposi, who denied the existence of the plague “because it was not classifiable in the only two possible ways, as substance or as an accident”, and evokes the risk of “a reduced representativeness and a surreptitious increase of quorum that can make election very difficult “.
The Covid emergency, combined with the short time between January 24 and the end of Mattarella’s mandate on February 3 (see the article on the page), would advise not to extend the voting. Yet yesterday also photographed the frozen troops in their camps, in particular the center-right stopped on the candidacy of Silvio Berlusconi. But something is moving between Arcore and Via Bellerio, as announced yesterday by the Sole 24 Ore. If those who spoke with the Knight assures that the elderly leader of Forza Italia is increasingly listening to the advice of his historic plenipontentiary Gianni Letta to take the beau geste of the step backwards to take on the role of king maker of a shared candidate, the same leader of the Lega Matteo Salvini makes it known that he is not tied to the name of the Knight and that he has already initiated contacts with the other leaders on other solutions. The figure of Mario Draghi continues to stand out in the background, also because it is supported by the secretary of the Pd Enrico Letta and by the leader of the opposition Brothers of Italy Giorgia Meloni.
The knot of the 5 Stars remains, the first parliamentary group: if the Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio is now no longer hidden among the supporters of the Draghi card, the president Giuseppe Conte first hoped for a female President and then made it known that he did not want to put vetoes against anyone (let alone on Draghi), the Senate group on Monday unmarked itself by indicating a preference for the Mattarella bis despite the denials of the President himself and the hostility of Salvini and Meloni. Yesterday, the former premier tried to close ranks in the meeting of parliamentary groups convened on the subject of the vaccination obligation: “We are the party with the real majority and we have a duty of responsibility and credibility towards the entire country: we castrate to give the image of going in no particular order and of a split Movement ».