League gives Italians chance to vote on coalition

Bloomberg

All of Italy gets to have its say on the populist coalition’s policy program this weekend, when the League, one of two parties involved, opens up ad-hoc polling stations in towns and cities across the country.
Matteo Salvini, the party’s 45-year-old leader, is offering Italians a chance to vote on the deal on Saturday and on Sunday, though his staff have boiled the 58-page document down to just one page and 10 key areas, omitting his would-be partner’s signature policy, a minimum income for poorer
Italians.
The key action though will be behind the scenes, as Salvini and
Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio, 31, try to agree on a candidate to lead their administration before a rendezvous with President Sergio Mattarella
on Monday.
“That is the real issue,” said Wolfango Piccoli, a political analyst at Teneo Intelligence in London. “If there is no deal on the team, the agreement will come down.”
The populist duo are set to report to the 76-year-old head of state after a week that saw Italy’s bonds and stocks roiled by reports about their spending plans and their rejection of European Union budget rules. The 10-year bond spread ended on Friday at 165 basis points after widening by more than 30 basis points over the week. That’s the most since October.

Prime Minister Wanted
Neither Salvini nor Di Maio has so far said publicly who should be premier, though Salvini insists it shouldn’t be either of them. Di Maio is still holding out hope.
“I don’t know yet if I will be prime minister,” he told reporters Friday in Aosta, northern Italy, where he was campaigning ahead of a regional election on Sunday.
“What I know is that we are
bringing to the government our real leader, which is our government
programme.”
Giuseppe Conte, a law professor at Florence University, is the most likely candidate for the prime minister’s post, while Salvatore Rossi, the Bank of Italy’s director general, could be picked as finance minister, Il Messaggero newspaper reported, without saying how it got the information.
While Five Star was the biggest single party in March’s election, the League was part of a center-right alliance that won the most seats overall. Both men claimed the right to lead the next government, and that dispute has dogged their efforts to form a coalition ever since.
Five Star supporters have already had one chance to vote on the coalition pact in an online ballot organised by the party. More than 94 percent voted in favour.
After Salvini met the League leadership in Milan, the party said that it would go further, and open up its consultation to everyone — though it’s a vote organised by the League
and with the ballots counted by
the League. The party’s description of the program includes scrapping a pension reform that raised the retirement age, blocking immigrants arriving on Italy’s coasts and a flat tax for families and companies.
There’s no mention of a “citizen’s income” for the poor at $920 a month — a flagship Five Star promise that the League denounced as a handout during the campaign for March’s election.