Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on Tuesday said two working groups of experts he set up to try and find common ground for bickering political leaders who have failed to form a new government would take eight to 10 days to complete their task.
Elections in the eurozone’s third-largest economy more than a month ago resulted in a three-way split between Pier Luigi Bersani’s center-left, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right and a new protest party led by former comedian Beppe Grillo.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, who steered Italy out of the debt crisis, but came a distant fourth in the election because of criticism of his austerity measures, will remain in office with limited interim powers until a new Cabinet is formed.
GRAND COALITION
Bersani has failed to woo lawmakers from Grillo’s Five Star Movement and has ruled out a grand coalition with his archrival Berlusconi, a scandal-tainted billionaire who has been prime minister three times in two decades in politics.
Bersani on Tuesday said he could meet with Berlusconi, but reiterated his opposition to a cross-party “grand coalition” arrangement.
The leftist also signalled he could step aside if he became an “obstacle” in forming a government, amid criticism from within his own party.
Berlusconi has said there should either be an agreement with the left or Italy should hold new elections — a prospect that worries European capitals and financial markets concerned that instability could reignite the eurozone crisis.
A recent poll indicated that Berlusconi, who has been fiercely critical of Germany’s role in Europe and questioned whether Italy should stay in the euro, would win snap elections with 32.5 percent of the vote against 29.6 percent for Bersani.
PROPERTY TAX
Bersani’s coalition won the Feb. 24 to Feb. 25 elections by a whisker — just 125,000 votes ahead of Berlusconi, who has re-gained popularity with his call for an end to austerity and the abolition of an unpopular property tax imposed by Monti.
The two working groups set up by Napolitano have a total of 10 experts, including political and non-political figures, with one group devoted to political reforms and the other to economic ones.
The first will look into trimming bureaucratic costs and reducing the number of lawmakers in parliament — 945, including deputies in the lower house and senators in the upper house.
The second will look at emergency economic measures as the country endures its sixth consecutive quarter of recession and unemployment remains near record highs at 11.6 percent.
Some experts say Napolitano’s initiative could be aimed at forging a cross-party government deal similar to the one struck in the Netherlands in October last year two months after inconclusive polls.
REBUILDING: A researcher said that it might seem counterintuitive to start talking about reconstruction amid the war with Russia, but it is ‘actually an urgent priority’ Italy is hosting the fourth annual conference on rebuilding Ukraine even as Russia escalates its war, inviting political and business leaders to Rome to promote public-private partnerships on defense, mining, energy and other projects as uncertainty grows about the US’ commitment to Kyiv’s defense. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were opening the meeting yesterday, which gets under way as Russia accelerated its aerial and ground attacks against Ukraine with another night of pounding missile and drone attacks on Kyiv. Italian organizers said that 100 official delegations were attending, as were 40 international organizations and development banks. There are
The tale of a middle-aged Chinese man, or “uncle,” who disguised himself as a woman to secretly film and share videos of his hookups with more than 1,000 men shook China’s social media, spurring fears for public health, privacy and marital fidelity. The hashtag “red uncle” was the top trending item on China’s popular microblog Sina Weibo yesterday, drawing at least 200 million views as users expressed incredulity and shock. The online posts told of how the man in the eastern city of Nanjing had lured 1,691 heterosexual men into sexual encounters at his home that he then recorded and distributed online. The
TARIFF ACTION: The US embassy said that the ‘political persecution’ against former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro disrespects the democratic traditions of the nation The US and Brazil on Wednesday escalated their row over US President Donald Trump’s support for former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, with Washington slapping a 50 percent tariff on one of its main steel suppliers. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva threatened to reciprocate. Trump has criticized the prosecution of Bolsonaro, who is on trial for allegedly plotting to cling on to power after losing 2022 elections to Lula. Brasilia on Wednesday summoned Washington’s top envoy to the country to explain an embassy statement describing Bolsonaro as a victim of “political persecution” — echoing Trump’s description of the treatment of Bolsonaro as
CEREMONY EXPECTED: Abdullah Ocalan said he believes in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons, and called on the group to put that into practice The jailed leader of a Kurdish militant group yesterday renewed a call for his fighters to lay down their arms, days before a symbolic disarmament ceremony is expected to take place as a first concrete step in a peace process with the Turkish state. In a seven-minute video message broadcast on pro-Kurdish Medya Haber’s YouTube channel, Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), said that the peace initiative had reached a stage that required practical steps. “It should be considered natural for you to publicly ensure the disarmament of the relevant groups in a way that addresses the expectations
RSS