ROME (AP) — Italian Premier
Mario Draghi said spontaneous displays of support for his government were “unprecedented and impossible to ignore” as he weighed Wednesday whether to rescind his resignation offer.
Draghi challenged the partner parties in his governing coalition to come back together after a key party withheld its support, triggering his offer to step down last week. He suggested he would continue to lead if the coalition members recommitted to a pact of unity that created his government a year ago.
“Are you ready? Are you ready to rebuild this pact? Are you ready?” Draghi thundered at the end of a speech to Italy’s Senate. “You don’t have to give the response to me. You have to give it to all Italians.”
In recent days, political leaders, mayors, doctors’ associations and ordinary citizens have urged Draghi to stay in office as Italy copes with soaring inflation and energy prices, Russia’s war in Ukraine and implementing a plan to use some 200 billion euros in European Union pandemic recovery funds.
Draghi offered to resign after senators from the 5-Star Movement, the biggest vote-getter in Italy’s 2018 national election, boycotted a confidence vote on a bill to deal with the economic crisis. They opposed a bill that included funding a trash incinerator for Rome, but their beef with the premier went well beyond that, including the government’s military support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Draghi, who was drafted to head the government last year, had long insisted he would never head a second government or one without the 5-Stars. He said flatly last week that he wouldn’t govern by ultimatum, a reference to 5-Star demands.
But it appeared the waves of appeals for him to reconsider, from inside and out of Italy, had an effect.
He told the Senate he was personally moved by the spontaneous shows of support, citing in particular the petitions by Italian mayors and medical personnel, the “heroes of the pandemic.”
“The mobilization in these days by citizens, associations and regions for the government to continue is unprecedented and impossible to ignore,” Draghi said. “This demand for stability requires all of us to decide if it’s possible to recreate the conditions in which the government can truly govern.”