(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 29 - Stalemate continued over the Italian presidential vote Saturday as majority parties said they would either desert the seventh ballot or cast blank votes in the bid to elect a successor to President Sergio Mattarella.
On Friday League leader Matteo Salvini and 5-Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte touted the head of Italy's intelligence service, 63-year-old Elisabetta Belloni, to become Italy's first woman president but this was immediately shot down by allies including Matteo Renzi's Italia Viva (IV) party.
Mattarella's own star appears to be rising as he gains increasing votes amid the deadlock despite having repeatedly insisted he does not want to stay on.
Salvini's partner, Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI) party, says it is backing former House Speaker Pier Ferdinando Casini in a break with its rightwing allies.
Democratic Party (PD) leader Enrico Letta said a roster of names had been discussed with Conte and Salvini including bookies' favourite and Premier Mario Draghi, Mattarella, Justice Minister Marta Cartabia, former justice minister Paola Severino, Belloni, Constitutional Court chief and former premier Giuliano Amato and Casini.
Salvini said "we don't think it is serious to continue with Nos and cross-vetoes and (we should) ask the president (Mattarella) to reconsider (his retirement from public life)".
Letta also appeared to thow the PD's weight behind Mattarella's election, albeit for a shorter term than the statutory seven years, by saying "we should heed the wisdom of the chambers" referring to the high vote for the outgoing president in the sixth ballot.
Mattarella's precedessor Giorgio Napolitano is the only president to have been re-elected, albeit reluctantly, serving another two years before standing down.
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.
On Friday 75-year-old Senate Speaker Elisabetta Casellati failed in her bid to become Italy's first female president.
A member of ex-premier Berlusconi's FI party, a devout anti-abortion and anti-gar marriage Catholic, she had been criticised for over-using a State jet and 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.
The seventh ballot of the 1,009 grand electors - lawmakers from both houses of parliament and regional representatives - started at 09:30 and the count was expected to produce another inconclusive result.
There will be an eighth ballot Saturday evening, and two more on Sunday.
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 in the fifth ballot, down from 166 in Thursday's fourth ballot, but then achieved 366 votes in the sixth ballot Friday night.
The centre right's decision to vote for Casellati caused tension within the broad coalition supporting Draghi's government.
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. (ANSA).