Italian parties begin power-sharing talks
Alliance with Berlusconi a sticking point as leaders negotiate
Far-right and anti-establishment forces in Italy resumed battle yesterday over who can lead a new government, as a second round of talks began with a row over Silvio Berlusconi leaving little room for manoeuvre after last month’s inconclusive election.
Five Star Movement (M5S) leader Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini, head of the nationalist League party, was set to meet Italian President Sergio Mattarella for consultations at the presidential palace yesterday afternoon.
The talks began in the morning in Rome with the smallest groups in the Italian parliament.
The M5S is Italy’s largest single party after picking up just under 33 per cent of the vote in the March 4 election.
Salvini’s right-wing coalition, which includes Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, is the largest group with 37 per cent.
Both Di Maio and Salvini have said that they are ready to govern with one another but Di Maio is demanding that Salvini break his alliance with media magnate Berlusconi, something the 45-year-old League leader has so far refused to do.
Salvini was expected to present a united right-wing front yesterday, going to meet Mattarella with Berlusconi and his other coalition partner Giorgia Meloni — leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party — after the three went separately to the first round of talks last week.
Salvini needs to keep his coalition intact for regional elections on April 29 in northeastern Friuli-Venezia Giulia where the League is aiming for victory. In order to win, it has to maintain its alliance with Forza Italia.
‘Belongs to the past’
On Wednesday Alessandro Di Battista, an important figure within the M5S, said Berlusconi represented everything that was wrong with Italy.
“They are the words of the many people who believe that Berlusconi belongs to the political past,” Di Maio said on current affairs programme Porta a Porta.
However an agreement between Di Maio and Salvini is currently the best hope for a working parliamentary majority.
The Democratic Party (PD), the big loser of the election after its centre-left coalition gained just under 23 per cent of the vote, has been courted by the M5S.