Government talks turn sour between M5S and Lega
ROME – Relations between the Five Star Movement and the right-wing coalition had turned sour on Wednesday morning after a bruising day of rhetoric appeared to set plans for a new government back considerably.
Matteo Salvini weighed in on the claims of Five Star’s leader, Luigi Di Maio, with the latter insisting on Tuesday that only he could become prime minister in Italy’s next government.
“If Di Maio says ‘either me or no one,’ he’s wrong, because today he is no one. You can’t go into government saying either me or nothing, otherwise what discussion is there,” the League’s leader opined.
But Di Maio shot back shortly afterwards, claiming that “it’s not insistence for the sake of it, we got 32 percent of the vote.”
One poll conducted by Piepoli and carried in La Stampa on Wednesday, suggested that Italians might side with M5S on the question of the premiership. Three in five of those polled wanted to see the League and M5S form a government, but it was Di Maio that was preferred as a PM candidate to Salvini.
Less conventional support for M5S was offered up by the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who remains holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London having fled bail.
In an interview with La Repubblica, Assange said he remained “sceptical” about the forms of direct democracy that the party pursued, but that he supported the Movement’s stance on transparency.
Salvini, however, continued to allege that Di Maio was approaching the negotiations in the wrong manner, especially after the League had “taken backwards steps” on the speakerships in Parliament, renouncing their right to one of the positions in favour of a more palatable Forza Italia candidate.
“We can’t take backwards steps on backwards steps,” Salvini added. Instead he suggested that “we must start again with a united right.”
He likewise noted that M5S’s recent claims that they would never deal with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia would spell an end to any deal. “If M5s say ‘out with FI’, then it’s goodbye,” he suggested.
He also highlighted that though he wasn’t working for it, there appeared now a 50 percent chance that Italians would return to the poll.
The two leaders are set to meet next week in parliament on “neutral ground.” In the meantime, M5S are planning meetings with all of Italy’s parties, ahead of the consultation process that President Sergio Mattarella will be beginning to form Italy’s government.
The president will have his work cut out in the current climate to select a figure who can command a government, with the process of forming a government likely to take months rather than weeks.
Elsewhere, Il Messaggero highlighted that Silvio Berlusconi, the 81-year-old leader of Forza Italia, was looking to restore the image of his party.
The work was begun yesterday, with the election of two whips in parliament from Forza’s moderate wing. Anna Maria Bernini was appointed to lead the group in the Senate, while former minister, Mariastella Gelmini, took on responsibility for the Chamber of Deputies.
Going forward, the paper predicted that Forza’s national secretary might go to a joint ticket between Gelmini and Antonio Tajani, the current president of the European parliament.
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