Premier Matteo Renzi told lawmakers for his Democratic Party (PD) on Monday that the "decisive vote" to elect Italy's new president will be the fourth ballot on "Saturday morning", ANSA sources said.
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 PD to cast blank papers in the first three ballots, sources said. 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. Renzi is set to meet the representatives of other parties, including three-time premier Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of the opposition centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party, on Tuesday for talks on Giorgio Napolitano's successor as president.
The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), however, has declined Renzi's invitation for talks.
The premier said that the PD will propose just one name as a candidate to be Italy's next president to other parties, rather than giving a list of names for them to choose from, ANSA sources said. The other parties will be given a simple yes-no choice of whether to back the candidate the PD proposes, Renzi said, according to the sources.
He also said that this week's vote for a new president was a chance for the centre-left group to bury the "fiasco" of the 2013 head of State elections. In 2013 two presidential candidates proposed by former PD leader Pier Luigi Bersani were sunk by internal rebellions within the party. In the case of the second candidate, two-time premier Romano Prodi, an estimated 101 PD members voted against, forcing Bersani and the leaders of other parties to beg Napolitano to embark on a second term as president. Napolitano reluctantly did so to avoid a crisis, becoming the first Italian president to be re-elected, but the 89-year-old stressed this was a temporary situation and he resigned earlier this month.
"The 2013 fiasco is on everyone's CV," Renzi said. "Today we have the opportunity to make up for it.
"The election of the new president is a fundamental step for the credibility of the PD and of this political class. "I'm confident there'll be no repetition of 2013.
"I'm not betting on your loyalty, but on your intelligence, "on your ability to be a political group. It's not about faith in me. "It's not a referendum on the government, or on me".
While calling for unity, however, Renzi also said he defended "the right to dissent". He stressed that past presidents such as Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Francesco Cossiga were elected despite "snipers", numbering 180 and 170 respectively, who used the secret vote to buck the party line. The premier also said that it was an "anomaly" that Italy has never had a woman president.
Stefano Fassina, a senior member of a minority of PD members who are harshly critical of Renzi's leadership, said Monday that he agreed that the party should seek a united line on the candidate to be next president. Fassina said he was against the idea of PD rebels backing a rival candidate to run against one that Renzi may propose on the basis of a possible agreement with Berlusconi. "It's important that the PD manages to pass the test of the presidential election with unity," Fassina told Monday's meeting, the sources said. "The idea of looking for an anti-candidate is wrong. "The maximum level of agreement should be sought out and in this case we must seek dialogue with FI".
Another PD rebel, Pippo Civati, has proposed that the centre-left group make Prodi its presidential candidate again, in a letter to the party's leadership, the sources said.
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