Italy awaits technocratic cabinet line-up amid growing political crisis

Italy’s caretaker prime minister Carlo Cottarelli met with the president on Wednesday morning after delays in his announcement of a cabinet line-up.

Meanwhile, Five Star Movement (M5S) leader Luigi Di Maio has backtracked on calls to impeach the president and reopened the door to a government with the nationalist League party. Their bid to govern collapsed over the weekend, resulting in political chaos that has raised fears for the stability of the eurozone.

Support is growing on all sides of the political spectrum for a summer election. The Democratic Party, League and Five Star Movement have all called for a vote “as soon as possible”.

‘Italian democracy’s darkest night’ 

The proposed populist government collapsed after president Sergio Mattarella vetoed the nomination of a eurosceptic finance minister, who was backed by the majority of lawmakers.

Mattarella said that an openly eurosceptic economy minister was counter to the parties’ joint promise to simply “change Europe for the better from an Italian point of view”.

Both parties have in the past advocated leaving the eurozone, but drastically toned down their rhetoric on the euro in the run-up to the election, and most polling suggests the majority of Italian voters are in favour of Europe’s single policy.

A presidential veto is nothing new in Italy, and previous prime ministers have put forward an alternative name for the post, but this time the League and M5S refused to back down. Their PM candidate gave up his mandate, and both parties called for peaceful protests.

League leader Matteo Salvini, a fellow eurosceptic who was Savona’s biggest advocate, blamed the “powers-that-be, the markets, Berlin and Paris” for Mattarella’s decision. The nationalist leader said that there would be League stands all over the country this weekend to collect signatures for a petition calling for the head of state to be “directly elected by citizens.”

• What does Italy’s constitution say about the political crisis?

• RECAP: How did Italy end up in political crisis?

• How Italian and international press reacted to ‘unprecedented’ chaos

Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

Meanwhile, M5S chief Luigi Di Maio called on party supporters to attend a rally in Rome on Saturday, the anniversary of Italy’s transformation into a republic in 1946, after what he called “Italian democracy’s darkest night”.

“Paolo Savona would not have taken us out of the euro. It’s a lie invented by Mattarella’s advisors,” Di Maio said in a live video on Facebook. “The truth is that they don’t want us in government.”

However, he has since rowed back on calls to impeach Mattarella. After initially saying that an impeachment trial for the former constitutional court judge was “almost a certainty”, on Monday Di Maio said this was “no longer on the table”.

• Who is Carlo Cottarelli, the technocrat set to be Italy’s PM?

• Here’s how Italy’s president explains his controversial veto

• What’s next for Italy?

So what’s the next step for Italy?

After the collapse of the M5S-League government bid, the president nominated former IMF director Cottarelli to form a technocratic government.

Cottarelli has said that should his technocrat government win parliamentary approval, it would stay in place until elections at the “start of 2019”. If it doesn’t get approved — a highly probable scenario since the populist parties have a majority in parliament — the vote will take place earlier.

If Italians do return to the polls, the biggest winner is likely to be Salvini. A recent poll by IndexResearch put the League at 22 percent, five points up from its vote share in the March 4th ballot.

Source:Thelocal.it