ROME -- Italian President Sergio Mattarella indicated Friday that he will name a new Prime Minister designate by next Thursday with a mandate to run the country for some six months before new elections, after a new electoral law is passed. Outgoing Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and his foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni both are in the frame, political sources say. 

 President Mattarella will not allow snap elections to go ahead without a functioning consistent electoral law between the two Chambers -- despite him having previously committed the error of allowing an electoral law to come into vigour that was only valid for one Chamber, the sources said.

 The head of state, dealing with his first government crisis, has said that he will make a decision at latest by Thursday about the new Prime Minister delegate, which is expected to be either Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni or Renzi himself. The government will then enter its next phase, whatever that will be, with a shelf-life of at least four or (more probably) six months, until a new electoral law is passed and elections can then go ahead.

 After Jan. 24, Italians will find out what will happen to the electoral law if the Chamber of Deputies should declare it to be partly unconstitutional. Then the legal experts will have to maintain which laws still stand after the Constitutional Court have finished with it.

 At that point the parliament would have to work to harmonize as much as possible the laws of the Chamber and of the Senate, also on the basis of principles established by the Chamber’s sentence.

 Elections will only be able to be considered once a rational and, moreover, constitutional law is approved. As electing the second Parliament in a row with an illegitimate method of voting would destroy the credibility of the whole institutional system.

 jp-nkd