Italian President Sergio Mattarella speaks to the media at the end of the second day of consultations at the Quirinale Palace in Rome, capital of Italy, on April 13, 2018. The second round of talks to form a national government has failed to produce a workable majority, Italian President Sergio Mattarella told the country in a live statement on Friday. (Xinhua/Jin Yu)
by Stefania Fumo
ROME, April 14 (Xinhua) -- The battle lines have been drawn in the ongoing push and pull between political factions after Italy's inconclusive March 4 election left the country with a hung parliament and two relative winners -- a center-right bloc led by the rightwing League party, and the populist Five Star Movement.
After two rounds of formal talks led by President Sergio Mattarella, who has the power to name Italy's next prime minister, League leader Matteo Salvini and Five Star chief Luigi Di Maio have grown noticeably closer, but appear to have shied away from the final jump.
The stumbling block is League coalition ally Silvio Berlusconi and his moderate Forza Italia party.
The Five Stars, who pride themselves of being untainted by corruption and cronyism, object to the media mogul, who was expelled from parliament in 2013 following a tax fraud conviction. Berlusconi is also currently a defendant in at least two ongoing witness-tampering trials in connection with alleged so-called "bunga bunga" orgies at his home while he was still prime minister.
The Five Stars has been trying to woo the League away from Berlusconi as a precondition for any government deal.
On Thursday, Di Maio, whose party won 32.5 percent of the national vote, said that while there is "an institutional synergy with the League", the center-right bloc "is an obstacle to change" as long as it includes Berlusconi and his Forza Italia party.
"No one can tell me or my party what to do," an indignant Berlusconi said Friday on a campaign stop in the southern region of Molise ahead of local elections there later this month.
"I am ready to take on the role of government leader," Salvini, whose coalition won 37 percent of the vote, tweeted Friday. "But if the others continue to bicker, we're going back to the vote."
However, some believe the League and the Five Stars have already done a deal, and the rest is just posturing for the benefit of their respective voters.
According to a recent survey by the Demopolis Institute, 46 percent of Five Star voters and 65 percent of League voters would favor a government deal between the two.
However, a whopping 86 percent of Five Star voters said a deal that includes Berlusconi would be "unacceptable".
"Di Maio and Salvini want to make a government together...by pretending Berlusconi is there but he's not there," Matteo Ricci, a prominent member of the center-left Democratic Party of outgoing Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, told Tagada talk show on La7 private broadcaster.
"Clearly this dance can't go on forever. If they don't find an agreement, there will be no government," Ricci added.
As far as Mattarella's next move, the consensus among media pundits appears to be that he will choose between two options: conferring a so-called "exploratory mandate" on one of the speakers of the houses of parliament, or picking one of the two relative winners and entrusting either Salvini or Di Maio with a "pre-mandate" to sound out a possible majority.
The other options for Mattarella are picking a non-political figure to lead a so-called "government of the president" to carry out specific reforms over a set amount of time, or to dissolve parliament and call new elections. Both of these are remote possibilities, according to most media pundits.
However, more might be revealed over the weekend: Di Maio and Salvini are widely reported to have made plans to meet at the Vinitaly wine fair in the northern city of Verona on Sunday. Perhaps the two leaders will make a deal over a glass of Chianti after all.
