Rome: Italy launched talks on Wednesday aiming to break political deadlock between anti-establishment and far-right leaders and form a new government a month after a general election.
Despite agreeing last week on the nomination of the speakers in parliament, the anti-migrant League and the Five Star Movement (M5S) have not budged publicly on their demands to be allowed to govern.
Last month’s election yielded a stalemate: a right-wing coalition including the League and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s party won 37 per cent of the vote. M5S got the biggest share of any single party with just under 33 per cent.
M5S leader Luigi Di Maio stepped up the rhetoric in the lead-up to President Sergio Mattarella’s series of consultations, which began at 0830 GMT at the Quirinal presidential palace in Rome and were scheduled to finish on Thursday afternoon.
Di Maio said on television on Tuesday that he would only deal with either the League or the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), which leads the outgoing government and suffered a collapse in the election.
He said any deal with Matteo Salvini’s League must exclude media magnate Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, the second largest party in the right-wing coalition and a fierce rival of the M5S. “Salvini needs to choose between revolution and the restoration. Whether to leave Berlusconi and change Italy or whether to stay with him and not change anything,” said Di Maio.
Salvini responded on Facebook that, unlike the M5S, the League “excludes any alliance with a PD rejected by the Italian public”.
He reiterated that the right will discuss a partnership with Di Maio “but without being subjected to vetoes or impositions.”
In any case, both will have to make their cases to Mattarella. Mattarella was to meet the Chamber of Deputies and Senate speakers and political leaders for consultations, with the biggest parties pencilled in for Thursday. — AFP
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