(Bloomberg) -- With just two days left to form a new coalition government, the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement remain at loggerheads over who should be Italy’s next prime minister.
The Democrats’ leader Nicola Zingaretti will back Roberto Fico, one of Five Star’s earliest members and the head of Parliament’s lower house, according to a Democrat official who asked not to be named. Five Star’s leader Luigi Di Maio wants to stick with Giuseppe Conte who quit a premier last week as the previous coalition fell apart.
“For the Democrats, Fico represents the most progressive area of Five Star, a sort of anti-Di Maio,” said Giovanni Diamanti, a political analyst and founder of Quorum. “And this is also why Di Maio is behind the scenes opposing the name.”
The two main parties on the Italian left are scrambling to bridge years of tribal warfare to avert an election that could open the door to the right wing populist Matteo Salvini, who pulled his party out of the government this month to try to capitalize on his rising popularity and force a new vote. Salvini has signaled he’d launch a renewed assault on the European Union’s budget rules with a promise of a 50 billion-euro ($56 billion) stimulus plan. A League victory would fan concerns about Italy’s mountain of public debt.
Italy’s perpetual political turmoil, the country has had more than 60 governments since World War II, has made it difficult for any sustained effort to right the country’s shaky finances and tame a debt that tops 130% of gross domestic product. Europe’s third-largest economy stagnated in the three months through June. It was the fourth quarter in five that the economy failed to expand.
A new election could jeopardize efforts to get a budget plan passed by the end of the year and President Sergio Mattarella has given the parties until Tuesday to work out a government deal that would spare the country a new vote. During a call Sunday, Di Maio and Zingaretti disagreed again over a new Conte premiership, according to party officials. The leaders are continuing to talk in a bid to find an alternative solution, a Democratic Party official said.
League Awaits
The appointment of Fico as prime minister would be another blow for Di Maio. After 14 months of power-sharing with the League, support for Five Star has dropped from 32% in last year’s general election to less than 17%, according to the latest poll published by Sole 24 Ore Sunday.
A Five Star party official said on Sunday that Fico intends to remain in his role as Lower House head.
Without a deal, Mattarella has made it clear that Italy will be facing new elections, which could bring the anti-immigration League to power. Support for League was near 40% before Salvini pulled the plug on the government. That might be enough for the League to win a working majority in Parliament.
