Italy parties propose unknown academic to head government

ROME: If you have never heard of Italy’s possible new prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, then you are in good company. Neither have the vast majority of Italians.

A law professor at Florence University with no political experience, Conte has been plucked from obscurity by the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the far-right League as a front-man to head their big-spending government.

“Who’s ever heard of him?”, said Carlo Arrighi, an ice-cream maker in central Rome. “It would have been better if they had chosen someone who was elected.” 5-Star leader Luigi Di Maio told reporters he had recommended to President Sergio Mattarella that Conte should lead the new coalition.

The head of state is not obliged to accept the request and could yet seek another candidate.

Conte is close to 5-Star and was one of the people put forward by the party before the inconclusive March 4 election, when he vowed to simplify Italy’s labyrinthine bureaucracy. “First we have to drastically abolish useless laws,” Conte said, adding that there were “many more” than the 400 pieces of superfluous legislation previously cited by Di Maio.

That was the first time Conte, 54, had appeared in the public spotlight, though he is on the board of numerous academic and judicial bodies and had participated in conferences on justice matters organised by 5-Star.

Italy is no stranger to unelected, “technocrat” prime ministers, but in the past they have usually been called in by the president to get the country out of a crisis, and they have picked their own cabinet and set their own agenda. This time 5-Star and the League have spent 10 days hammering out a joint programme and only picked someone to execute the programme at the end of the process.

“The situation is pretty unprecedented and bizarre, so it’s hard to predict how it is going to end up,” said Giovanni Orsina, politics professor at Rome’s Luiss University. Orsina said the way Conte had got the job nomination made him appear weak, but that may not necessarily be the case.

“It all depends on his personality,” he said. “He is being put there as a notary to follow the parties’ orders, but the position of prime minister carries its own strength and he will be the one that holds everything together.”

Full story @ timesofoman.com/world