Pleas pile up in Italy for PM Draghi to rethink exit

ROME (AP) — Pleas were piling up Sunday in Italy aimed at persuading Premier Mario Draghi to stay in office instead of resigning as he tried to do last week after being let down by a populist coalition partner.

Hundreds of mayors have signed an open letter. Union leaders and industrialists, who often have opposing agendas, have been united in pressing Draghi to keep on governing. Italy and other European nations are facing soaring energy costs, steep inflation, surging COVID-19 cases and the war in Ukraine. In addition, a severe drought is parching Italy.

By Sunday afternoon — three days after populist 5-Star Movement senators boycotted a confidence vote tied to an government energy relief bill — more than 80,000 citizens had signed a “Draghi stay” online petition, launched by former Premier Matteo Renzi, who heads a small centrist party in Draghi's 17-month-old government.

”Let's mobilize ourselves in every way to bring back Draghi to Chigi Palace (the premier's office),'' Renzi tweeted.

The letter originally grouped 11 mayors, including from Rome and Milan, but soon gained support from several hundred mayors of cities and towns, state TV said Sunday. The mayors cited the problems of everyday citizens as some of the “good reasons” Draghi should stay put. Financial markets consider the former European Central Bank chief as a pillar of solid fiscal governance for Italy, which is receiving billions in European Union pandemic recovery funds.

If Draghi has been moved by the entreaties, he wasn't saying.

The premier has been holed up in a countryside home mulling over what he'll tell Parliament on Wednesday. President Sergio Mattarella, who last week rebuffed Draghi's resignation, told him to lay out the political situation before lawmakers.

Clearly not budging was...