ROME: Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi branded the 5-Star Movement a danger for Italy on Friday, killing off any lingering chance of a coalition tie-up between his rightist bloc and the anti-establishment party.
Berlusconi and his allies, including the far-right League, won the most seats at last month's national election, while the 5-Star emerged as the largest single party.
However, both sides fell well short of an absolute majority and efforts by the Italian president to put together a new government have made little progress, with multiple vetoes put forward by various parties making his task almost impossible.
Latest efforts to overcome the impasse this week appeared to make no headway, and President Sergio Mattarella's office said the head of state would consider the situation over the weekend before deciding what to do next.
5-Star, which promises a crusade against entrenched corruption, has said it is willing to join forces with the League, but not Berlusconi, whose long political career has been dogged by graft and sex scandals.
Earlier this week, media tycoon Berlusconi said he would have no problem working with 5-Star, but on Friday he turned ferociously on the anti-system party and urged his allies to reconsider their refusal to seek a pact with the defeated centre-left.
"The 5-Star are a danger for the country. It is not a democratic party, it is a party for the unemployed," he said during a visit to Molise, a southern region that is holding local elections at the weekend.
"In my company, I would hire them to clean the toilets," he added, using unusually strong language even for Berlusconi. Italians "voted very badly" last month, he said, and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) was "light years" ahead of 5-Star.
His call for talks with the PD was dismissed by League leader Matteo Salvini, the de-facto head of the increasingly fractious rightist camp.
"My patience is finished," Salvini told reporters in Milan, adding that he would like to be given a mandate by the president to see if he could form a government.
However, he declined to say if this meant he was ready to abandon Berlusconi and do a deal directly with 5-Star, something he has always refused to countenance up until now.
"I am certainly not going to ask for votes from the PD," he said, adding: "I am sorry that even on the centre-right, there are those who are playing at destroying, not building things."
If ultimately Salvini stays true to his word and declines to break his alliance, the president has few options left to resolve the stalemate.
One would be to try to convince the 5-Star and PD to work together. Another would be to seek consensus for a non-political government of technocrats tasked with re-writing the electoral law and prepare for a return to the polls next Spring.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.