"We are here because the Italians asked. Are you ready to rebuild this pact?".
Mario Draghi arrives a few minutes late in the Senate chamber.
He speaks for half an hour, he also raises his voice in the crucial passages of a speech that claims, on the one hand, the results obtained thanks to the political forces.
When they worked "in the interest of the country".
But on the other hand, he sets clear limits so that we can continue with the government of "national unity" which up to now has guaranteed "the democratic legitimacy" of the executive and its "effectiveness".
The broadest possible consent of Parliament, observes the premier, is all the more necessary for a "prime minister who has never presented himself in front of the voters".
And the only way forward, he strongly emphasizes, "is to rebuild this pact all over again, with courage, altruism, credibility".
In short, the resignation will still remain on the table if at the end of the day those answers from the parties, expected in vain in the 5 days of the frozen crisis by Sergio Mattarella, do not arrive with the invitation to go to the Chambers that "today allow me to explain to you and all the Italians the reasons for a choice that was as painful as it was due ".
Enough ambiguity, is the premier's request.
Which is addressed, without mentioning them explicitly, above all to Lega and Movimento Cinque Stelle which, not surprisingly, do not join in the applause that follows the end of the speech in the Chamber.
Of course, it opens up to autonomy, to pension reform, to improvements in citizenship income, to keeping the energy transition objectives steady, to resolving critical issues on the Superbonus.
Which, however, together with the other building discounts, must be made "less generous".
And then, he insisted, we cannot ask for energy security for the Italians and at the same time "protest" against the regasifiers.
You cannot support the reforms and then give the square the edge, as in the case of taxis.
Ukraine must continue to be armed because it remains the only way "to help the Ukrainians to defend themselves".
Now the word to the parties, with many unknowns and concerns above all about the decisions that Lega and M5s can take.
