Italy center-right patches over populist pact clash

Bloomberg

Italy’s League leader Matteo Salvini and ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi pledged to remain united after a virulent clash over relations with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, with the prospect of a pop-
ulist Five Star-League government alarming investors.
Center-right alliance leaders Salvini, Berlusconi and Giorgia Meloni of the far-right Brothers of Italy party said in a joint statement after meeting on Saturday that they’re all committed “not to seek individual accords for the formation of the government.” They insisted that talks on picking speakers for both houses of parliament were not a precursor to government negotiations.
The show of unity was in marked contrast with tensions that saw Salvini, in accord with Five Star, fracture the center-right by failing to back Berlusconi’s candidate for the job of speaker of the Senate in a vote. The ballots for parliamentary speakers, which will last through the weekend, are a first clue to new alliances after both the center-right and Five Star failed to win a majority in March 4 general elections.
A jubilant Luigi Di Maio, Five Star’s leader, saw Salvini’s move as promising for efforts to form the next government together. “Salvini kept his word. He was brave,” Di Maio told his advisers, newspaper La Stampa reported on Saturday. “And this is a great signal for the government.”
Di Maio’s office declined to confirm the report, saying that Five Star appreciated Salvini’s coherence and the fact that he did what he had said he would do.

POPULIST FEARS
Investors in Italy, and the country’s European Union partners, fear a populist government could jeopardize state finances and a feeble economic recovery, as well as undermining the euro area because of their spending plans and demands for EU reform. Di Maio and Salvini, whose party overtook Berlusconi’s Forza Italia in the general elections, have taken the lead in negotiations for the speakers’ jobs.
At their Saturday meeting, held at Berlusconi’s Rome residence, the center-right leaders called for their bloc to get the Senate job, and Five Star the lower house one. The center-right has long been divided over
Five Star, with Salvini open to an alliance, while Berlusconi has been pushing for a pact with the center-left Democratic Party.
Berlusconi’s party described as “an act of cold hostility” the League’s vote for ex-minister Anna Maria Bernini as Senate speaker. While she is a member of Berlusconi’s party, she wasn’t its selected candidate.
The former premier’s office said that the Senate vote “on the one hand breaks the unity of the center-right coalition, and on the other reveals a plan for a League-Five Star government.” Forza Italia had selected former minister Paolo Romani as its candidate for the Senate job, but Salvini’s senators voted against him. Salvini’s decision is seen by Forza Italia as yielding to Five Star, which had ruled out backing Romani or any candidate with a judicial conviction. Romani has been convicted of embezzlement, an offense he denies.
Big hurdles still remain on the way to populist power. Di Maio and Salvini both claim the premiership. Adding to the challenges, Five Star’s political base is among the poorer voters of southern Italy, while the League’s traditional support comes from the industrial north.