Vote on Italy president risks center-left split

By Gavin Jones

ROME (Reuters) - Center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani is expected to propose former Senate speaker Franco Marini as candidate for Italy's president, on Wednesday, risking a split in his Democratic Party a day before voting begins.

A PD source said Marini, a prominent Catholic and former leader of the moderate CISL union, would be put forward at a party meeting shortly. He would also have the backing of Silvio Berlusconi's center-right bloc and the centrists led by Prime Minister Mario Monti, the source said.

However he faces opposition from within Bersani's own camp, with the 38-year-old mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, his main party rival, immediately making clear that he would not back Marini.

"We oppose this choice. Our parliamentarians will not vote for him," he told the website of the daily La Stampa.

Parliament begins voting on Thursday for the successor to President Giorgio Napolitano, whose term ends on May 15.

It will be up to the new president to end the political deadlock left by the inconclusive February election, either by persuading the parties to come to an accord that would allow a government to be formed or by calling new elections.

Although the 80-year-old Marini has now emerged as the first candidate who appears to have some broad backing, there is no guarantee he will obtain enough votes in the secret ballot of lawmakers and regional representatives.

The parties have struggled for weeks to agree over the new president and Marini, who lost his seat in the February election, is known to be unpopular among many of the PD's senators and deputies.

Earlier on Wednesday the 5-Star Movement changed its candidate for president, saying it was backing academic and left-wing politician Stefano Rodota after its original choice, television journalist Milena Gabanelli, pulled out.

Rodota, who was president of the PD's predecessor, the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), in the 1990s, could potentially get significant backing from elements of the PD who do not want to do a deal with Berlusconi.

Other candidates often cited are former prime ministers Giuliano Amato and Massimo D'Alema, who are thought to have Berlusconi's backing, and former European Commission president and prime minister Romano Prodi, who does not.

Amato and D'Alema are both handicapped by perceptions that they are insiders too closely linked to the discredited traditional political elite.

A two-thirds majority of 1,007 electors from the combined houses of parliament plus 58 regional delegates are required to elect the president in the first three rounds of voting.

After that a simple majority is enough, meaning the PD could use the fact it has more deputies than any other party to force through a candidate with the backing of smaller groups.

Voting begins at 10 a.m. (4 a.m.EDT) on Thursday and will proceed with two rounds per day until a president is elected.

As well as a ceremonial function, the head of the Italian state has a vital political role, a function Napolitano had to carry out during the 2011 financial crisis when he appointed Mario Monti to lead a technocrat administration.

(Additional reporting by Naomi O'Leary and James Mackenzie; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

View the original article here

Italy's center-left leader fails to form govt

MILAN (AP) — Italy remained in political gridlock Thursday after the center-left leader announced he had failed to form a government.

Pier Luigi Bersani, who has been talking with parties since Friday, expressed some bitterness when he told reporters at the president's office in Rome that he found "unacceptable" attempts by some parties to set "preclusions and conditions."

Bersani's attempt at forming a stable government able to help Italy out of recession and get Italians back to work was always a long shot. Bersani's coalition controls the lower house, but not the Senate, and inconclusive February elections gave strong voice to a protest party.

The next move belongs to President Giorgio Napolitano, who will hold a day of consultations Friday to "personally ascertain the developments possible," the president's secretary general, Donato Marra, said.

The failure makes more likely a possible technical government with a well-defined mission to take on urgent tasks, which include rewriting the election law, and push through some measures that have broader acceptance, like cutting political costs.

"I do believe now that the president will try to find a personality who is not so political as Bersani, possibly coming out of the left, and see if that person can find some sort of agreement to get the backing" from both the center-left and the center-right, said Giovanni Orsina, a professor of political science at Rome's LUISS University. "That is the only solution at the moment."

The Feb. 24-25 elections ended in a three-way gridlock with Bersani's center-left forces, former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's center-right forces and the anti-establishment protest movement founded by comic-turned-political leader Beppe Grillo.

Old animosities and a hardline left wing of his party forced Bersani to rule out an alliance with Berlusconi's center-right forces — a sort of grand coalition that Napolitano clearly favored. And Grillo's 5 Star Movement made clear that it wouldn't back Bersani or any established party — despite Bersani's appeal to responsibility during a meeting Wednesday.

The 5 Star Movement's apparent intransigence makes a way forward difficult. It refuses steadfastly to vote confidence in any government that it does not run, and the Italian constitution requires a vote of confidence for a government to officially take office.

The movement on Thursday proposed that Italy could continue under the caretaker government of Mario Monti, allowing the newly elected parliament to take on some urgent tasks. It was unclear if Napolitano would find that acceptable, if Monti would want to stay on, or if such a possibility were even constitutional.

Orsina said there is a limit to how long a government can continue without a vote of confidence, and this caretaker government was formed provisionally until a new government could be formed. "If we say it is not a provisional solution, that it is more permanent, I think Monti should go back to the chambers and ask for confidence," Orsina said.

Monti, whose technical government enacted emergency measures to help protect Italy from the sovereign debt crisis after Berlusconi stepped down in 2011, dissolved parliament last December after Berlusconi pulled support, paving the way to elections. More recently, he has been under pressure over his government's flip-flop over the fate of two Italian marines charged with murder in India. It first announced earlier this month the pair would not go back to face trial after being allowed home temporarily, but then sent them back anyway fearing international isolation over the move.

His decision to run in the elections, finishing fourth with a dismal 10 percent of the vote, also has sapped his authority as a technical figure.

View the original article here