Anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) leader Luigi Di Maio and anti-migrant Euroskeptic League leader Matteo Salvini met in Rome Thursday for talks on a possible new government, 88 days after the inconclusive March 4 general election.
They were later joined by their potential premier pick, law
professor Giuseppe Conte.
The talks were said to be focusing on a possible new post for
anti-euro economist Paolo Savona, whose rejection as economy
minister by President Sergio Mattarella led to the collapse of
the first M5S-League government formation bid on Sunday.
There has been speculation as to who would take Savona's
place at the economy ministry.
Rome Tor Vergata University economics lecturer Giovanni Tria
is now being touted as a possible economy minister, sources
said.
Savona would move to European affairs and Enzo Moavero
Milanesi, a former EU affairs minister, would be foreign
minister, the sources said.
Salvini said he was engaged in the "last hours" of talks to
form a government with the M5S.
"Last hours of work for the government, we're putting
everything into it! Meanwhile the news takes us back to harsh
reality, with an immigrant picking off the feathers of pigeons
in broad daylight and in the middle of the street...Go home!" he
wrote on Facebook.
Salvini and Di Maio may be joined by far-right nationalist
Brothers of Italy (FdI) leader Giorgia Meloni, who met Salvini
earlier and is a candidate for a ministry if the FdI join the
government majority.
Di Maio is said to be wary about having another far-rightist
as well as Salvini as his partner, since polls show the M5S has
been bleeding voters it gained from the centre-left Democratic
Party (PD) on March 4 because of the possible new government's
rightward drift.
Rightwing policy points in the "contract for a government of
change" the League and the M5S drew up include a 'flat tax' with
two rates, 15% and 20%, which would allegedly disproportionately
benefit the better off, and a huge crackdown on migrants, with
Salvini vowing to eject over half a million of them and set up
detention centres across Italy.
Salvini, for his part, is said to be looking at criticism
from his voters about his perceived unwillingness to join a
government and instead bank on benefitting from a surge in
support in fresh elections.
Meanwhile law professor Giusepe Conte left his post as
lecturer in Florence to travel down to Rome on Thursday
afternoon.
Conte was to be the premier of the M5S-League executive that
self-destructed after Mattarella vetoed Savona, citing the
threat to Italians' savings because of market turbulence that
would ensure from having an economy minister who was openly
against the euro and Germany.
Since then, both Di Maio and Salvini have repeatedly stressed
they do not want to leave the euro.
Meanwhile ex-IMF official Carlo Cottarelli is waiting in the
wings as a possible stopgap technocrat premier to lead Italy to
new elections at the end of this year.
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