Rome: Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini sought on Wednesday to douse speculation of a government collapse and early general elections, saying he wanted to govern for a full term.
The two ruling parties, Salvini’s right-wing League and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, are feuding as they compete for votes ahead of European Parliament elections on May 26, stoking investor fears that the government could fall.
Tensions between Italy’s ruling parties have climaxed in an overnight cabinet meeting, triggering talk of a looming crisis for their populist coalition government.
The far-right League and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement(M5S) have been squabbling for months, but frictions have increased in the run-up to May’s European Parliament elections.
The latest row played out in a late Tuesday cabinet meeting that ran into the night, in which the League effectively vetoed a financial aid package for Rome, which has an M5S-affiliated mayor.
On Wednesday, the Il Messaggero and Corriere della Sera dailies ran front page headlines that spoke of a “war” or “fight” over the so-called “Save-Rome” measure.
La Stampa, another newspaper, said the government was “tottering.”
After the cabinet meeting, M5S sources said debt-relief measures for Rome had only been “half adopted,” and pledged to extend them again during parliamentary discussions.
League leader Matteo Salvini, who is also deputy premier and interior minister, had argued that Rome should not get any preferential treatment compared to other debt-laden Italian municipalities.
His M5S counterpart Luigi Di Maio, deputy premier and industry minister, first boycotted Tuesday’s cabinet to do a TV interview,then joined it to engage in the dispute with Salvini.
From the opposition, former premier Matteo Renzi of the centre-left Democratic Party wrote on Facebook that the ruling coalition is paralysed by “total conflict on every issue.”
Prior to this week, the League and the M5S have rowed over abortion rights, migration policy, a League politician accused of corruption, plans to build a high-speed rail tunnel across the Alps, and other issues.
Meanwhile, the government had presented the decree as a landmark in its efforts to kickstart Italian growth, which has lagged euro zone peers for two decades, but it instead served to underline an intensifying feud between the coalition partners’ leaders.
5-Star chief Luigi Di Maio showed up for the meeting more than an hour late, after using a TV appearance to call for a junior League minister to resign over a corruption scandal. League leader Matteo Salvini has refused to sack the minister.
“It’s official - there are two governments,” read the front-page headline in national daily newspaper La Repubblica.
Di Maio and Salvini repeatedly say they want the alliance to continue even as they attack each other on a range of issues, and they have shown no willingness to compromise over the future of the League official at the centre of the scandal. — dpa
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