Italy Bersani: PM job 'only for mentally ill'

[Baluarte]

The head of Italy's centre-left bloc has hit an impasse in his efforts to form a government and said only a mentally ill person would want to govern Italy now.

Pier Luigi Bersani was rebuffed by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement on Wednesday.

His Democratic Party narrowly won the elections last month but lacks the upper house majority needed to govern.

Without progress fresh elections could be held in June.

"Only a mentally ill person could have a burning desire to govern right now," Mr Bersani said at a meeting with Five Star politicians.

The political stalemate is delaying reforms that could help revive Italy's recession-hit, debt-laden economy.

Five Star, led by former comedian Beppe Grillo, won an unexpected 25% in the election and holds the balance of power.

"I want things to be clear: I am ready to assume a huge amount of responsibility, but I ask everyone else to take on a little bit themselves," Mr Bersani said.

He has ruled out forming a coalition with the centre-right bloc of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the second largest force in parliament.

Later this week Mr Bersani is expected to report back to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, who will decide how to proceed.

He has the power to look again to a respected technocrat to try to form an interim government.

In November 2011, former EU commissioner Mario Monti - an economist- was appointed prime minister, but in last month's election his group came fourth with just 10% of the vote.

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It'd seem it will come down like this: Either Monti 2 (or another bankster lapdog), or an Eurosceptic government.

Great changes happening in Italy in any case.

[alfieb]

Even though the voters thoroughly rejected Monti, it seems he's the only choice for Italy other than a new election.

[Baluarte]

Then a new election would be better, according to the last polls I've read, both Grillo and Berlusconi have improved their scores.

Worst thing it could happen for Italy is the reelection of Goldman Sachs.

[Baluarte]

UPDATE:

Italy's president seeks way out of political deadlock

(Reuters) - Italian President Giorgio Napolitano meets political leaders on Friday in a bid to break a month-old stalemate after an election left no party able to form a government.

Center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani, who won the biggest share of the vote in the February 25 vote but fell short of a majority, told Napolitano on Thursday he had failed to secure enough support from rival parties to form a government.




The 87-year-old Napolitano, whose own term ends in mid-May, said he would personally meet representatives from the main parties to assess what options remain to prevent an early return to the polls.

The deadlock in Italy, the euro zone's third largest economy, comes as the Cyprus banking crisis has revived fears of renewed financial market turmoil that could threaten the stability of the currency bloc.

After five days of talks, Bersani failed to secure a deal with either Berlusconi's center-right bloc, the second-largest force in parliament, or ex-comic Beppe Grillo's 5-Star Movement, which holds the balance of power.

The center-left leader rejected Berlusconi's demand that he be allowed to decide Napolitano's successor as head of state, and Grillo's populist group maintained its refusal to support a government led by any of the big parties it blames for Italy's social and economic crisis.

Napolitano's options now include appointing a figure from outside politics to lead a technocrat government like that of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti or a cross-party alliance backed by the big parties.

Among possible candidates are Fabrizio Saccomanni, the widely respected director general of the Bank of Italy, the head of the constitutional court Franco Gallo or former prime minister Giuliano Amato.

Napolitano meets representatives from former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party at 1000 GMT, before seeing the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and finally Bersani's Democratic Party (PD) in the evening.

CRISIS

The political gridlock has fed growing worries about Italy's ability to confront a prolonged economic crisis that has left it in deep recession for more than a year, with a 2-trillion-euro public debt and record unemployment, especially among the young.

Rumours have been circulating for days that ratings agency Moody's is preparing to cut its rating on Italy's sovereign debt, which is already only two notches above "junk" grade, partly due to the uncertain political outlook.

The immediate pressure from the bond markets has been taken off during the Easter break but failure to make progress in securing an agreement could lead to new turbulence next week after a steady rise in Italy's borrowing costs in recent days.

However the prospects appear slim of appointing the kind of government capable of turning around an economy that has been in decline for more than a decade, with deep-rooted problems ranging from corruption to suffocating bureaucracy.

Napolitano has made clear that he does not want Italy to go back to new elections immediately, not least because the widely criticised election law is likely to lead to a similar inconclusive result.

However even a so-called "president's government" led by a political outsider, would need the backing of parliament, which may be difficult to secure given the deep divisions which remain between the parties.

Many are turning their thoughts towards new elections, with Berlusconi's center-right bloc confident that the momentum created by the 76-year-old billionaire's surge in the final weeks of the last election campaign will continue.

"We're not afraid of going back to vote," Daniela Santanche, one of Berlusconi's most faithful allies told the daily La Repubblica. "The opinion polls are telling us that we'd win and the PD would lose 150 deputies," she said.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

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New elections!

[Virtuous]

Monti was portrayed in a bad manner because he is a banker, am I right? Yet he was the best option to keep Italy's finance stable. Same happened in Malta...populism prevailed and the Socialists are in power, god forbid we become the second Cyprus.

[alfieb]

Austerity is unpopular. Italians do not want cuts. It was not Monti's occupation that doomed him, it was that he knew what Italy needed and the Italian people were unwilling to go along with it.

[Baluarte]

Monti works for Goldman Sachs.
He imposed draconian austerity, loyalty to the Euro and doesn't give a shit about the future of Italy as a Nation. Typical internationalist bankster.

The fight is not Socialism vs Ultraliberalism. That is just a fake duality that hides the real solutions.

I like Grillo...he seems lacking in some areas but all in all he is the best guy today in Italy.
Berlusconi has vastly improved his Eurosceptic positions, but as a traditional politician, he can't really be trusted. Still better than Bersani I'd say.

[Virtuous]

Nah, I don't believe in this conspiracy bs I'm sorry. I just stick the the real story, where SOME irresponsible government loaned from the IMF and pulled all other Eurozone countries with them.

[Baluarte]

What do you think of the policy that Monti defends to bailout banks while punishing the people for their market mistakes?

[Incal]

Lean cows and fat cows. Deal with it guys.

[Baluarte]

Discussions failed today.
I'm almost certain that new elections will take place now:

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No end to Italy deadlock despite president's efforts


(Reuters) - Italy remained in political deadlock on Friday after a new round of talks led by President Giorgio Napolitano failed to break the stalemate created by elections last month that left no group able to form a government alone

Napolitano, 87, conducted a swift round of talks with the three main forces in parliament on Friday after the failure of a week of efforts by center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani to win support for a new government.

But all the parties remained in the same entrenched positions they have occupied since the February 24-25 election, with no sign of movement from any of them.




Bersani won the largest share of the vote in the election but fell short of a majority in parliament.

The third biggest force, Beppe Grillo's populist 5-Star Movement, which holds the balance of power, on Friday again rejected backing a Bersani government or any administration not led by them.

The center-left in turn reiterated that it would not enter a coalition with Berlusconi, which the 76-year-old billionaire media magnate said after his talks with Napolitano was the only way out of the crisis short of a snap new election.

Bersani's deputy, Enrico Letta, said after meeting Napolitano that a coalition with Berlusconi's center-right, "would not be the choice of change the country has asked for."

Berlusconi and 5-Star both ruled out backing a technocrat government like the one led by outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti, whom they both blame for pushing Italy into recession.

This had been seen as a possible alternative way to give Italy the government it needs to address a deep economic crisis.

"Our position has not changed. We expressed it with absolute clarity to the president," Berlusconi told reporters after the meeting with Napolitano.

Grillo on Friday scornfully rejected any idea of giving support for a government not led by his movement.

"Give them a vote of confidence? Those are swear words in the mouths of people like them," Grillo said in a live video broadcast on his popular blog. "They should all just go home."

Bersani says Berlusconi is untrustworthy and also rejects the latter's demand to nominate a successor to Napolitano, whose mandate expires in May.

PRESIDENT'S OPTIONS LIMITED

The refusal by Berlusconi and his allies in the Northern League, as well as Grillo, to back a technocrat government reduces Napolitano's options greatly and makes it much less likely that an independent figure will be able to lead a non-political administration.

"We were against the Monti government and if there is to be another government of that type it's a thousand times better to have new elections," League leader Roberto Maroni said.

The political gridlock has fed growing worries about Italy's ability to confront a prolonged economic crisis that has left it in deep recession for more than a year, with a 2-trillion-euro ($2.6-trillion) public debt and record unemployment, especially among the young.

Rumors have been circulating for days that ratings agency Moody's is preparing to cut its rating on Italy's sovereign debt, which is already only two notches above "junk" grade, partly due to the uncertain political outlook.

Napolitano has made clear that he does not want Italy to go back to new elections immediately, not least because the widely criticized election law is likely to just repeat the deadlock.

He made no announcement after the end of the talks on Friday and officials said he was considering his options. After the failure of the latest round of talks it is not clear what he can do to avoid a quick return to the polls.

Many are already preparing to vote again, with Berlusconi's center-right confident that the momentum created by his surge towards the end of the last campaign will continue.

A poll by the SWG company on Friday showed the center-right had pushed Bersani's bloc into second place since the vote.

(Additional reporting by Naomi O'Leary; Editing by Barry Moody and Michael Roddy)

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Berlusconi or Grillo for next PM? That is the question I think.

[alfieb]

Berlusconi or Grillo for next PM? That is the question I think.

I heard in Italian media that Grillo can't or won't hold office as a convicted killer.

[Baluarte]

Update:

Italy's 10 'sages' try to help form government

ROME (AP) — Ten "wise men" will try to do what Italy's bickering politicians haven't been able to accomplish since inconclusive elections in late February — figure out a formula to help form a new government fast for the recession-mired nation as financial markets impatiently await an end to the impasse.

President Giorgio Napolitano created the panel of experts last week after center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani failed to form a governing coalition with wide support in Parliament, and the 10 members will have their first meeting with him at the Quirinal Presidential Palace on Tuesday, which coincides with the resumption of financial trading after the long Easter weekend.

Napolitano has referred to the group as working committees, while the media and other politicians immediately dubbed them the "10 wise men."

Bersani's forces won the lower Chamber of Deputies in the elections, but fell short of controlling the Senate. He refused the offer of archrival Silvio Berlusconi, the former center-right premier whose coalition finished runner-up, to form a "grand coalition" government. And the third bloc in the gridlocked political puzzle, the anti-establishment, anti-euro newcomer, 5-Star Movement headed by comic Beppe Grillo, refused to back anybody but themselves for the job of governing Italy.

The panel, including lawmakers, professors and a central bank official, will try to devise a reform agenda that a broad spectrum of parties can embrace, especially electoral and economic reforms, in a bid to avoid new elections soon.

They're hardly impartial. Several of them have been lawmakers in either Bersani's or Berlusconi's parties. Another panel member is a minister in the caretaker government of Mario Monti, who was appointed in late 2011 to replace Berlusconi as premier as Italy veered toward the abyss of the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis.

European Union and central banking officials credit Monti with keeping Italy from succumbing to the crisis. But voters resoundingly rejected his harsh medicine for financial recovery — higher taxes, slashed government spending and tightening the generous national pension system. Monti's new centrist movement finished a poor fourth in the balloting, as Italians tired of making financial sacrifices that weren't coupled with measures to jumpstart the economy and reduce soaring unemployment.

But while Napolitano's goal in setting up the panel was to help find common ground among potential government coalition partners, about the only thing politicians seemed to agree about it was they were skeptical about what it could accomplish.

"Either a political government is born" quickly or, "we do what comes naturally in a democracy, return to the polls," Berlusconi ally Maurizio Gasparri said. "Let hope it's not just a delaying tactic" to put off new elections, Gasparri told Sky TG24 TV Monday in a phone interview. Berlusconi, on trial in Milan in criminal cases which he says are part of a campaign by leftist sympathizers to end his political career, could try again for a comeback if elections are called soon.

A veteran Radical party leader and former European Union commissioner, Emma Bonino, echoing a common criticism, said the panel was hardly representative of Italians — for starters, there were no women, she noted. "Can you imagine if the president picked 10 women? Everybody would have said, 'There's something wrong here,'" Bonino said wryly on Radio Radicale.

Bonino, touted by some to be a potential successor to Napolitano after his own term runs out next month, sounded pessimistic that the panel could come up with a formula that could unite Italy's squabbling parties. "I can remember many commissions of 'sages' in my long political career. And the results have never been very brilliant," she said.

Also skeptical was a 5-Star Movement senator, Paola Nugnes. "It still isn't clear to me what these 'wise men" have to do, and how they'll operate," she said on Facebook.

But a pro-Monti politician, Giuliano Cazzola, brushed off the skepticism.

"The only judgment on President Napolitano's action that counts will be given tomorrow by the markets," Cazzola said in a statement. "The rest is just chatter."

If the main parties fail to unite their forces behind a reform program in Parliament, Napolitano can ask a non-political figure to try to head a "government of purpose," created to last a few months or just long enough to adopt electoral reforms to improve the chances that Italy won't emerge paralyzed again by inconclusive results at the ballot box. Napolitano urged such reform for most of his seven years in office, but proposals to change the electoral law, as well as other political reform, such as reducing the number of lawmakers and eliminating state funding for political parties, went nowhere in Parliament.

One name mentioned as a possible premier for such a government of specific scope is Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, a highly respected non-partisan figure.

---------------------------------

Somewhat funny that the only guy that is not uncomfortable with yet another techno-oligarcho committee deciding the fate of the country is precisely one of Goldomonti Sachs' lackeys.

[Baluarte]

Update:

Italy parliament to begin voting on new president on April 18

(Reuters) - Italy's parliament will begin voting to select a new president to replace Giorgio Napolitano on April 18, a statement from lower house speaker Laura Boldrini said on Wednesday.

Napolitano, whose seven-year term ends in mid-May, has been struggling to break a political deadlock since last month's election left no one with a workable majority, making it likely that the next president will inherit the impasse.




The president is elected by a joint sitting of the two houses of parliament together with representatives from Italy's regions.
--------------------------------

[Baluarte]

Update.
----------------------------------------------
Italy's Bersani meets Berlusconi to seek end to impasse

(Reuters) - Italian centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani met his centre-right rival Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday to discuss the election for the next president of the Republic, offering hope of a breakthrough in the deadlock left by elections in February.

"It was a good meeting but we're at the beginning," Enrico Letta, deputy leader of Bersani's Democratic Party (PD), told reporters in parliament.

He said the meeting had focused only on the issue of the next president, not on any possible deal to form a government, which has so far proved impossible for the deeply divided parties to secure more than 40 days after the election.

Letta said there would be further meetings in the next few days with Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) and other parties but said no names were discussed at Tuesday's meeting, intended to prepare the way for the start of the presidential election process on April 18.

The election of the next president, to succeed Giorgio Napolitano whose term ends on May 15, is the next big test for the parliament, which is split between the two traditional centre-right and centre-left blocs as well as the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement.

It is unclear how far any accord over the presidential election will clear the way to a deal that would allow a government to take office but the tone struck following the meeting was much more cordial than it has been in recent days.

"It was useful to get clarity on the criteria we need first to agree on a range of names, then on a person who can unite the country," Letta said.

"In a moment of great division we feel a strong need to give a signal of unity to the country. That's why we want to try to find unity around a name we can both support," he said.

In a separate statement, PDL secretary Angelino Alfano said the next president would have to be acceptable to his party although he did not repeat Berlusconi's previous demands that the centre-right should choose the head of state.

"The president must represent national unity and therefore cannot be, or even appear to be, hostile to a significant part of the Italian people," he said.

No clear favourite has emerged although several names have been floated including former prime ministers Romano Prodi and Giuliano Amato and former European Commissioner Emma Bonino.

"WE HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN"

The vote for the next president will be vital because with his mandate about to expire, Napolitano no longer has the power to dissolve parliament and call new elections and it will be up to his successor to find a way out of the deadlock.

Bersani, who won a majority in the lower house but fell short of the Senate majority which would have allowed him to govern, has so far refused Berlusconi's demands for a "grand coalition" between the two rival forces.

The other main force, the 5-Star Movement led by ex-comic Beppe Grillo, has refused any alliance with either of the big parties it blames for Italy's deep social and economic crisis.

In an interview with RAI state television, Bersani stuck to his rejection of Berlusconi's demands to form a coalition, saying the centre-right leader had shown during the technocrat government of Mario Monti that he could not be trusted.

"When I meet him, I will say, 'We haven't forgotten. We know you even if you try to disguise yourself'," he said.

"We're trustworthy and we look for trustworthiness in others, if there are proposals, we'll see. Only they shouldn't come with proposals for a 'governissimo' because that's not possible. If they've got other ideas, we can talk about it."

Bersani has so far stuck to his hard line on Berlusconi despite increasing calls from senior figures in sections of his party for a dialogue with the centre-right to avoid a potentially destabilising return to the polls.

He wants to present a limited set of proposals to parliament and seek a wider accord among the parties for a broad series of institutional reforms, including changes to the widely criticised electoral law which led to the stalemate.

Berlusconi has demanded that the centre-right be allowed to choose the next head of state as the price of its support to a government led by the centre-left. He says the only alternative is new elections at the earliest date possible in June or July.

(Additional reporting by Roberto Landucci; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Michael Roddy)

[alfieb]

Alfano is a rat. He'll sell out Berlusconi just as he did Sicily.

[Diërker]

Alfano is a rat. He'll sell out Berlusconi just as he did Sicily.

Come si fa a sapere alfano farebbe una cosa del genere? e' fino a destino. Lasciare solo lui, capiche?

[alfieb]

Lui è un politico a Roma.

[Diërker]

Lui è un politico a Roma.

SO che ma ancora...