ROME – Matteo Renzi ruled out any possibility of an alliance between the Democratic Party (PD) and the Five Star Movement (M5S), stating that “we would never form a government with extremists,” in a forum at La Stampa newspaper.

 Pressed to explain why he consider M5S extremists, Renzi responded by pondering “are they inside or outside Europe? Are they in favour of mandatory vaccines or not? The reality is… that the positions taken by M5S are profoundly far from what Italy had always known.”

 He likewise firmly denied that any channel existed between the PD and Forza Italia for forming a grand coalition and derided their headline tax proposal, the so-called “Flat Tax,” arguing that “Silvio Berlusconi proposes it every five years, an idea as believable as Father Christmas.”

 M5S’s leader, Luigi Di Maio, in turn said much the same, denying “all these scenarios of government with the left” but added that his party “will not leave the country in chaos” and that he would like to “put together single themes with which to build the programme of work of the parliament” across parties, similar to that used recently in Germany.  

 Elsewhere on the PD campaign trail, Walter Veltroni the party’s first leader, and current Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, appeared together on stage at the Teatro Eliseo.

 Veltroni hit out at recent comments by the European Union, who have voiced concern about Italy’s financial situation in the event of an electoral draw, by arguing that “maybe it is right that the European Union, instead of worrying itself about Italy, worry about what is said by the government of Hungary or Poland.”

 Gentiloni added that the PD represented the “left of government” who “have the objective of governing the country and improving it.” Italy’s Prime Minister has look ever more likely to be a continuity figure in recent weeks and has been driving home the message that the PD is the only serious party of government.

 This continued at the weekend, during a debate on the Domenica Live television programme, where Gentiloni argued that “anybody who is going to govern must guarantee a status of credibility and seriousness. The appeal to voters is that of not choosing populisms but serious forces of government for the good of Italy.”

 Silvio Berlusconi, meanwhile, became embroiled in an argument with Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper over allegations that he paid the mafia. Berlusconi went on the offensive at a Forza Italia rally in Milan. “Il ‘Falso’ Quotidiano, or Il Fatto, as it is called, accuses me in recent days of haing paid for many years the mafia. Do you realise the infamy an accusation of this kind places on me? I was on the contrary a victim of the mafia.”

 However, the challenge only gave the newspaper free rein to point out that the octogenarian leader is “still being investigated by the Prosecutor of Florence with a heavy accusation: he is suspected of being amongst the possible hidden people who ordered the slaughters of 1993 in Florence, Rome and Milan.” The similarly noted that in 2014 Marcello Dell’Utri had been sentenced to seven years in prison as the “decisive guarantor of the agreement between Berlusconi and Cosa Nostra.”

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