Mario Monti Should Insist That His Administration Is At An End

Whatever can Mario Monti be thinking of?  Why is he lending himself to this anti-democratic farce in Italy?  It is one thing to handle matters of everyday administration until the designated majority politician faces the House for a vote of confidence.  It is quite another to continue to govern the country when he has not just lost the last elections, he couldn't find the last elections again if he searched for them with both hands.  And it is no excuse for apologists to argue that the Constitution places no limits on what is meant by 'everyday administration'.  Mario Monti knows perfectly well that he is acting well beyond any commonsense interpretation of those parameters, let alone previous practice which contributes just as much to Italy's written constitution as the words themselves (of necessity, though codified versus non-codified is not the argument of this post).

The Leader of the Democratic Party should face the Parliament.  He has the mandate, he has the MPs.  If he wins a confidence vote then he's it;  if he doesn't then it should be Bersani running a caretaker administration, while new alliances are hurriedly shunted together to have their try, not Mario Monti.  If the President of the Republic has not noticed that there is a new Parliament whose confidence Monti does not enjoy, we have.  And most certainly Monti has.   Monti needs to get up the hill to Napolitano and tell him that's it, the Monti administration is over, tomorrow morning, first thing.  Otherwise he's as responsible for what is going on as Napolitano.