Sergio Mattarella’s ten years: Best wishes
Sergio Mattarella was elected President of the Republic for the first time on January 31 2015. He is the longest-serving President.
On January 31, 2015, ten years ago, Sergio Mattarella climbed the Hill for the first time and was elected President of the Republic. Sergio Mattarella, head of state, is currently in his second term. Elected for the first time on January 31 2015, he was elected on the fourth ballot with 665 votes, just under two-thirds of the elective assembly. President Mattarella was re-elected on January 29 2022, in his eighth term. In 2022, given the stalemate in the voting for his successor, the political forces opted for re-election. Today, January 31, 2025, ten years have passed since the beginning of his presidency.
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, was born in Palermo on July 23 1941. Sergio Mattarella is the fourth child of Maria Buccellato and Bernando Mattarella, a member of the Constituent Assembly, a historic exponent of the Christian Democrats and a minister several times between the 1950s and 1960s. Brother Piersanti was also a politician: he was assassinated on January 6 1980, by Cosa Nostra while he was President of the Sicily Region.
He chose to undertake a second mandate in 2022 after all political parties, except Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, requested it. This is despite Mattarella having made it clear on several occasions that he was unavailable for a second term.
After insistence, Sergio Mattarella thus became the second President of the Republic to be elected for a second term. The same fate also befell his predecessor, Giorgio Napolitano, who rose to the Quirinale in 2006 and was elected again in 2013. His encore lasted until 2015, then gave way to the current tenant of the Hill
Mattarella arrived at the Quirinale after a long and fruitful political career, which began in 1983 with his election to the Chamber of Deputies with the Christian Democrats.
What also pushed him to intensify his political activity, to which he was already close by family tradition, was his brother’s murderer: Piersanti Mattarella, President of the Sicily Region, killed by Cosa Nostra on January 6 1980.
Sergio Mattarella was a deputy continuously until 2008. Over the years, he has had government responsibilities several times: minister for relations with Parliament from July 1987 to July 1989; minister of Education from July 1989 to July 1990; vice-president of the Council from October 1998 to December 1999; and minister of Defense from December 1999 to June 2001.
The current tenant of the Colle has linked his name to the electoral law that opened the Second Republic’s season, the Mattarellum: a mixed majoritarian (75%) and proportional system used for the 1994, 1996, and 2001 political elections.
Having left Parliament in 2008, three years later, he was appointed by Parliament as a member of the Constitutional Court. He will remain in the Council until 2015, when he will, among other things, have the opportunity to contribute to declaring the electoral law that replaced the Mattarellum unconstitutional.
He was elected President of the Republic on January 31 2015, on the fourth ballot, with 665 votes. Thus, he became the 12th Head of State and the first Sicilian to assume the highest republican office.
In his first seven-year term, he managed many delicate political events: the failure of the 2016 constitutional referendum, the 2018 political elections without a clear winner, the troubled birth of the Conte I government (with the accompanying request for impeachment), Conte II with the Pd-M5s alliance, and the arrival of Mario Draghi.
After the 2018 political elections, the most challenging moment arrived: 88 days led to the formation of the first Conte government, supported by the yellow-green majority. In the middle, the President of the Economy rejected the Savona case, to which the never-formally-threatened impeachment of the M5s was added.
However, the most challenging test was undoubtedly that of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which President Mattarella became an objective point of reference. Thus, during the lockdown, the Fuorionda, with the spokesperson Giovanni Grasso, entered the collective imagination, in which he said that he, too, could not cut his hair. This phrase helped bring him closer to the population during that time of restrictions.
The Conte executive held firm in the most challenging moment, but there was a government crisis in Parliament afterwards. Mattarella chose to entrust Mario Draghi with ferrying Italy through the difficult season of Parr reforms.
Eight ballots were needed for Sergio Mattarella’s re-election on January 29, 2022, the most since 1994. The political forces sought an agreement or a show of strength for days, but both failed. The stalemate pushed the electors to ask him to remain at the Quirinale.
Sergio Mattarella’s new seven-year term began in January 2022, which was immediately very challenging. In February 2022, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out, while on July 21 2022, a chapter in recent Italian history ended: the Draghi government fell.
The autumn elections were won by the centre-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni, who became prime minister.
None of his predecessors had remained at the Quirinale for so long.
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