The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) are willing to move rejected economy minister pick, anti-euro economist Paolo Savona, to another post in a possible new government but their prospective ally, the anti-migrant Euroskeptic League, want to keep him in the same post in which he was scotched by President Sergio Mattarella, ending their first government bid.
M5S leader Luigi Di Maio said Wednesday that "we'll find a
person of the same calibre of the excellent professor
Savona for the Treasury and he will "stay in the government team
in another position".
Mattarella ssid he was weighing Di Maio's proposal "very
carefully".
League leader Matteo Salvini, however, said he hoped to form
a government with the M5S but rejected the M5S's idea of moving
Savona.
He said he wanted "the same team" and that Di Maio had agreed
that Savona was the best man for the job of representing the
government's economic position in Brussels.
Di Maio said the M5S and the League "never conceived the
hypothesis of leaving the euro".
Di Maio reiterated a call for a political and not
technocratic government saying that technocrat premier-designate
Carlo Cottarelli does not have the numbers in parliament.
The formation of a political government does not depend on
the M5S, which is in favour, but on the League, Di Maio said.
He said former premier-designate Giuseppe Conte could be
"recalled" with Savona moving places and thus potentially
meeting Mattarella's approval.
Salvini said his patience was "almost up" over the
possibility of forming a new government.
"In the meantime the mortgage instalments do not have
patience," he added.
"If they block me now, I'll ask for the votes to go it
alone," he said.
Like Di Maio, premier-designate Cottarelli went to see
Mattarella Wednesday and the pair agreed not to "force the
timetable" for the formation of a political government,
presidential sources said.
The two men thus decided to slow things down, because of the
evolution of the political situation, and certainly not due to
problems with the ministerial list that Cottarelli is drawing
up, the sources said.
Cottarelli is waiting for possible developments for the
formation of a political government before pressing further
ahead with his effort to form an interim technocrat executive,
sources said.
"During his work as premier designate for the formation of a
new government, new possibilities emerged for the creation of a
political government," sources close to Cottarelli said. "Faced
with the tension on the markets, this circumstance induced him -
in agreement with the president - to await eventual
developments".
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