(by Stefania Fumo).
Premier Matteo Renzi led a
Democratic Party (PD) delegation as they started a round of
talks with the leaders of other parties on Tuesday ahead of this
week's vote for a new president.
Lawmakers from both houses of parliament and regional
representatives will start voting to elect a new head of State
on Thursday.
But Renzi has told the centre-left PD to cast blank papers
in the first three ballots, saying the crucial vote will be the
fourth on Saturday.
The number of votes needed to elect a new head of State
drops to a simple majority of the 1,009 so-called 'grand
electors' in the fourth round, or 505 votes.
Tuesday's talks are expected to centre on the method Renzi
will use to select a candidate to replace 89-year-old Giorgio
Napolitano, who resigned this month, and be the arbiter of
Italian for the next seven years.
The premier is not expected to name the candidate he has in
mind, but talk about the characteristics the new head of State
should have.
The consultations started at the PD's Rome headquarters
with meetings with some junior partners in Renzi's coalition
government, including Interior Minister Angelino Alfano's New
Centre Right (NCD) party.
Renzi agreed with the NCD that the next Italian president
should be a politician and not a technocrat, sources from
various party delegations said after the talks.
Ex-premier and centre-right Forza Italia (FI) leader Silvio
Berlusconi will not attend FI's talks.
Rather, the opposition party will be represented by
Berlusconi advisor Giovanni Toti and its caucus leaders. But
Berlusconi will probably talk with Renzi Wednesday or Thursday,
sources said.
The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) has said it
will not take part in Tuesday's talks.
But a group of lawmakers that used to belong to the M5S
will meet the premier's party at around 21:00 Tuesday, PD Deputy
Secretary Lorenzo Guerini said.
So far the M5S has expelled or lost to defection 18 Lower
House deputies and 17 Senators. Tuesday's walkout of 10
defectors was the latest in a long series of losses for the M5S
after the party won a quarter of the vote in the 2013 general
election.
Disillusionment among lawmakers with Grillo's
uncompromising stance on refusing to reach agreements with the
traditional parties and with his allegedly authoritarian running
of the movement are largely to blame.
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