Stalemate in Italy's presidential
election continued Friday as the centre-right's bid to get
Senate Speaker Elisabetta Casellati elected head of State in the
fifth ballot of the election for a new president came up short
and the sixth ballot failed before it started as both sides said
they would effectively boycott it.
But centre-right Forza Italia (FI) Senate Speaker Anna Maria
Bernini said "we have opened negotiations with the centre-left,
let's see (what happens)".
The leaders of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and its
ally the populist 5-Star Movement (M5S), former premiers Enrico
Letta and Giuseppe Conte, went on to meet the leader of the
rightwing League party and FI ally, former deputy premier and
anti-migrant interior minister Matteo Salvini, who separately
met with Premier Draghi, a favourite to move up the hill to the
Quirinale Palace.
The PD, M5s, the left-wing LeU group and their nominal ally in
the centrist IV party had abstained in the fifth ballot, saying
a consensus figure is needed, not the pick of one side of the
political spectrum.
Neither the centre-left or the centre-right bloc has enough
votes on its own to carry the election.
The centre right abstained in the sixth ballot while the centre
left cast blank ballots. There are another two rounds of voting
on both Saturday and Sunday, with no end currently in sight.
In the past it has taken as many as 23 rounds to elect a new
president.
Casellati is a member of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's FI
party, a devout anti-abortion Catholic, and had been criticised
for a notorious past Berlusconi majority vote approving a motion
that a 17-year-old Moroccan runaway dancer the three-time
ex-premier and media mogul paid for sex with was in fact the
niece of late Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak.
The centre right said she was a bipartisan institutional figure
of unimpeachable standing.
A sixth ballot of the 1,009 grand electors - lawmakers from both
houses of parliament and regional representatives - started at 5
pm and the count was expected to produce another inconclusive
result.
A simple majority is needed to elect a successor to President
Sergio Mattarella, so the magic number is 505.
In the fifth ballot Casellati got 382 votes while 406 grand
electors abstained.
Mattarella, who is coming to the end of his seven-year term and
has said he does not want to be re-elected, got 46 votes, down
from 166 in Thursday's fourth ballot.
The centre right's decision to vote for Casellati has caused
tension within the broad coalition supporting Premier Mario
Draghi's government.
"They messed us about for three days," said PD leader Enrico
Letta referring to the centre right, which is made up of FI, the
rightwing League and the opposition right-wing Brothers of Italy
(FdI) party.
"They tried to divide us with fanciful ideas".
Draghi remains the bookies' favourite to get the top
institutional post in the eurozone's third-largest economy and
his chances are reportedly rising as the stalemate continues but
many MPs fear the election of the euro's saviour as ECB chief
will lead to them losing their seats in a snap election a year
before the natural end of the parliamentary term.
Many MPs and the domestic and international business community
are also worried that his departure may jeopardise key reforms
to the justice and tax systems and public administration needed
to secure almost 200 billion euros in EU post-COVID recovery
funds, helping turn Italy into a more modern, efficient and
greener economy.
The president is a largely ceremonial figure representing
national unity and upholding the Constitution as a sort of moral
compass for the nation, but can wield power in government crises
by naming premiers and may also ask parliament to reconsider
legislation.
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