Italian leader slowly proving he is the full Monti

Rome: Quiet and bookish, a little colourless, Mario Monti doesn't seem the kind of man to inspire religious epiphanies. But his leadership of Italy in the last five months has moved one leading politician to declare it not just a "miracle", but proof that God exists.

Granted, his transformation from mild-mannered technocrat to the man charged with saving Italy has been a bit startling. From a photo op with President Obama in the White House to a whistle-stop tour of Asia to woo foreign investors, Monti is on a tear, busy telling the world that his country is back in business.

Here at home, he's trying to revitalise the sluggish Italian economy and lighten a crushing load of government debt. As prime minister, Monti is determined to push through controversial labour reforms and persuade global financial markets to keep Italy afloat, not sink it.

It's an exhausting, herculean task for this unflappable leader of 60 million people, none of whom actually voted for him. Since mid-November, Monti and a group of similarly unelected ministers have presided over an emergency government appointed with the sole mission of pulling the country out of its financial and economic morass.

The suspension of normal democratic processes is supposed to be temporary, lasting only until elections next year.

Despite the lack of an electoral mandate, Monti's administration has been hailed at home and abroad for its can-do attitude after years of Italian official inertia under Silvio Berlusconi. To Pier Ferdinando Casini, it's nothing short of an answer to a prayer.

Miracle has happened

"Only a grand coalition is able to make the kind of unpopular decisions needed to save the country, even more so if this coalition is presided over by a man like Monti, who's a technocrat and not a politician," said Casini, head of the Terzo Polo (Third Pole) party.

"Up until a year ago, this was a dream. We talked about it, and everybody else would either laugh it off or push us away with scorn. The miracle happened. I'm Catholic, and this means God exists."

But choppy water lies ahead as some of the new government's more unpopular policies start to bite. The proposed labour reforms, which would make it easier for employers to fire workers, are already putting a dent in Monti's approval rating and sparking the threat of strikes.

And the experiment in government by non-elected technocrats has scrambled Italy's political system such that no one, not even seasoned analysts, dares predict what lies on the other side.

Will the current parties, reviled by many Italians, continue to exist? Or will Monti, a Yale-educated economist, find his unlikely premiership extended, as one prominent politician is suggesting, to the potential detriment of democracy in the land that produced Mussolini?

"There's been a dismantling of old patterns," said Roberto D'Alimonte, an expert at LUISS Guido Carli university in Rome. "We are dancing in the dark."

— Los Angeles Times