Rome, May 29 (TNS): Italy’s caretaker prime minister was Tuesday assembling a cabinet lineup despite almost certain rejection by the populists whose bid for power collapsed at the weekend.
Fresh elections are now looming as the most likely outcome of the long-running political saga sparked by inconclusive elections in March.
buy zithromax online http://www.kelvintech.com/kelvintech/wp-content/themes/innotech/img/footer/new/zithromax.html no prescription
Carlo Cottarelli, a former IMF economist, was tasked with naming a technocrat government on Monday after President Sergio Mattarella nixed a cabinet proposed by the far-right League and anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S).
The president, in particular, vetoed their pick for the economy minister, fierce eurosceptic Paolo Savona, throwing the eurozone’s third-largest economy into a fresh crisis.
Savona has called the euro a “German cage” and said that Italy needs a plan to leave the single currency “if necessary”.
Mattarella said that an openly eurosceptic economy minister was counter to the parties’ joint promise to simply “change Europe for the better from an Italian point of view”.
Cottarelli said Italy would face new elections “after August” if parliament did not endorse his team, a near certainty given that M5S and the League together hold a majority.
The parties’ approved nominee for prime minister, lawyer and political novice Giuseppe Conte, stepped aside following the decision to reject Savona, crashing the proposed government after nearly three months of convoluted horse-trading.
The subsequent nomination of Cottarelli as caretaker prime minister sparked angry calls for Mattarella’s impeachment since most lawmakers backed Savona.
League leader Matteo Salvini, a fellow eurosceptic who was Savona’s biggest advocate, said the anti-establishment government failed because of pressure from the “powers that be, the markets, Berlin and Paris”.
Five Star chief Luigi Di Maio called on party supporters to attend a rally in Rome on Saturday, the anniversary of Italy’s transformation into a republic in 1946, after what he called “Italian democracy’s darkest night”.
The latest chapter in the drawn-out political saga sent Italian stocks tumbling more than two percent and bond yields surging, with Italy’s debt risk premium hitting its highest level since November 2013.
