Italy struggles to form new government

ITALY’S major political players dug in their heels after meeting yesterday with the president in Rome for talks on who can break the parliamentary deadlock and lead a new Italian government.

Three of the country’s four largest parties have met President Sergio Mattarella as he attempts the difficult task of forming a government from the stalemate delivered by last month’s general election.

Luigi Di Maio, head of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), remains the only leader yet to speak with Mattarella after the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and right-wing coalition partners – the League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia – all visited the presidential Quirinal Palace before lunchtime yesterday.

Di Maio was scheduled to sit down with the head of state yesterday afternoon.

The right, led by League leader Matteo Salvini, won 37% of the vote while the M5S garnered the biggest share of any single party with just under 33%.

After the meeting, Salvini reiterated his post-election mantra of bringing a solid right-wing group, which is “more interested in political programmes than in ministerial positions”, to lead a new government.

“Plenty have come here to say ‘no’, but we have said ‘yes’ to the president,” he said.

That call to arms came following an invitation from Di Maio for Salvini to abandon Berlusconi, who the 31-year-old has refused to even meet since the elections, and work with the M5S to change Italy.

However, Salvini told Italian media that he would not exclude returning to the polls if everyone maintained their personal or party’s way of thinking.

After consultations, Italy’s president will take some time to decide who, if anyone, can command enough seats to form a government or whether a fresh round of consultations is necessary. The impasse has come about because no group is anywhere near a parliamentary majority in either the lower house Chamber or upper house Senate.

The right needs 51 more seats in the 630-seat Chamber and 23 in the Senate – which holds 318 seats – to form a stable majority. The M5S needs to secure the support of 94 more lawmakers in the lower house and 51 in the upper house.

Interim PD leader Maurizio Martina confirmed his party’s refusal to work with either the right or M5S despite having enough seats – 111 in the Chamber and 52 in the Senate – to form a government with either.

Another roadblock in the way of a new government is the mutual antipathy between Berlusconi and the M5S.

Berlusconi said Forza Italia was “not ready to form a government in which the politics of envy, social hatred, pauperism and justicialism prevail”. – AFP