Mario Draghi: The savior who fell victim to petty political squabbles

The political crisis that has been simmering for months in Rome, centered on the quarrels within the populist 5 Star Movement, has finally torpedoed the disparate governing coalition on the way to the elections scheduled for 2023. Mario Draghi resigned today, paving the way for Italian elections.

The former Italian prime minister arrived in the guise of the savior of the eurozone in 2012: Mario Draghi, who took over as prime minister in February 2021 to save Italy from withering, quit today, a victim of the petty political squabbles that have plagued Italian politics for ages. life, APE-MPE reported, citing AFP.

The latest attempt to withdraw failed yesterday. A “new trust pact, honest and concrete” is needed, Mario Draghi said to the Italian Senate, to no avail.

The Italian prime minister was finally abandoned before the vote of confidence not only by the 5 Star Movement, but also by its right-wing partners, the League and Forza Italia, who failed to overcome their own fates.

In February 2021, Mr Mario Draghi he had accepted the offer of the president of the Italian Republic to become prime minister to get Italy out of the health, economic, political crisis and to negotiate with Brussels an economic recovery plan from which Italy received the lion’s share.

Above the parties

A highly partisan and respectable personality, he proved to be a formidable negotiator who governed the country by leading a motley governing coalition of competing political parties that marched on the edge of prosperity.

The clashes with the factions of the coalition, whether it was the populist nebula of the 5 Star Movement or the far-right League of Matteo Salvini, they were not missing.

With the image of the “ambassador at the service of the institutions”, he had already given the first signs of arrhythmia appeared since December, when Mario Draghi was going to claim the presidency of the Italian Republic. The coalition parties put up a barrier, an experience that filled him with bitterness.

His motto however was “we never give up”as he had stated to the press before handing over the position of head of the European Central Bank to Christine Lagarde in October 2019, after a tumultuous tenure.

For Benoît Quéré, a former member of the ECB’s executive board, Mario Draghi “has a deep sense of the service of the public interest and the debt”.

But he is about to abandon ship just as Italy faces his shock war in Ukraine, with a new wave of the pandemic, with the preparation of the 2023 budget and with the obligation to implement all the reforms that Brussels requests from Rome so that Italy can benefit from the 200 billion euro package of the recovery plan.

International radiation

Μάριο ΝτράγκιΜάριο ΝτράγκιMario Draghi

During his leadership, from 2011 to 2019, the European Central Bank he took measures unimaginable in the early days of the euro 20 years ago: cutting interest rates into the negative, injecting liquidity through massive bond purchases in the markets and granting huge loans to banks.

Faced with the threat of a collapse of the Eurozone, Super Mario was ready for everything… “whatever it takes” to support the monetary union. Those magic words that Mario Draghi uttered at the time calmed the markets and saved, by all accounts, the euro.

His crucial tenure at the ECB gave Mario Draghi international prestige. The assumption of the prime ministership by a person of his caliber has restored Italy to the first European circle and ensured for Europe the certainty of the presence of a leader that can be relied on. Honoring him, the Economist speaks of a “prime minister worthy and respected on the international stage”.

Married and father of two children Mario Draghi received a Jesuit education and is holder of a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

After representing his country at the World Bank from 1984 to 1990, in 1991 he became director general of the Ministry of Economy and Finance orchestrating the large privatizations of the period 1996-2001. In 2002 he joined Goldman Sachs, a position that continues to draw criticism today.

Source: News Beast

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