Calenda, Renzi reach deal on Azione-IV tie-up

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 10 - Former industry minister Carlo Calenda and former premier Matteo Renzi on Wednesday reached a deal to team up their two centrist parties, Azione and Italia Viva (IV), for the September 25 general election.
    Calend said that although he had not met personally with Renzi he had been in phone contact with the former leader of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and "agreement has been reached on the underlying questions".
    He added, in an interview with La7 TV: "Now we are discussing other significant things".
    The two leaders are expected to meet later Wednesday to firm up the deal.
    Their so-called 'third pole', between the opposing centre-right and centre-left blocs, is currently polling at around 4% but Calenda is optimistic about grabbing votes from ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party, which has a somewhat similar electorate.
    For two days Renzi had been urging Calenda to team up and form a 'third pole' in the centre of Italian politics for the general election.
    Calenda on Sunday pulled out of an electoral pact with the centre-left PD, which Renzi once led, after the PD teamed up with smaller leftwing parties including Italian Left (SI) and Green Europe (EV), spurring Renzi to take up the baton for a possible third bloc in Italian politics.
    "We are willing to join the team because the Third Pole would be the great surprise of the elections and only a strong third pole would be able to ask (outgoing premier and former European Central Bank chief Mario) Draghi to stay on in the premier's office", said the IV chief, who has been shunned by his former party the PD and its leader, the former premier he brought down in 2014, Enrico Letta.
    Both Calenda and Renzi are campaigning on continuing the reformist agenda of Draghi, whose national unity government was brought down last month by a rebellion spearheaded by the populist 5-Star Movement (M5S) of his predecessor as premier, Giuseppe Conte.
    The M5S boycotting a key confidence vote in Draghi led to FI and the rightwing League also pulling support from Draghi last month.
    As a result, the M5S's budding partnership with the PD was also scuppered, leading Letta to cast around for other potential candidates for his self-styled "broad field" on the centre left of Italian politics.
    Renzi was never invited to join it but Letta was banking on Calenda's centrist appeal and has now blamed him for, in his words, "consigning the country to the right".
    However, a post-election match-up between the centre left and the third pole is still possible, while one with the M5S is also a distant possibility.
    IV is polling at around 3%, about 1% more than Azione now that Calenda's group has split from former ally More Europe (+E) after the latter decided to stick to the electoral deal with the PD.
    The third pole thus has around 5-6% of the vote, far behind the PD's 23.4% which combined with the SI and EV's 3.4% would put the current centre-left alliance on just under 30% of voting intentions, including the extra 2%-plus from Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio's new Civic Commitment (IC) group, the latest splinter from the once powerful M5S.
    Even if the centre left were to team up in that unlikely post-election alliance with the centrist third pole, or even more unlikely with the M5S, their combined score would still be a long way off the opposing centre right alliance's combined current polling tally of almost 45%.
    That alliance, spearheaded by Giorgia Meloni of the hard-right Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, is favoured to take control of Italian politics on September 25 and potentially give Italy its first woman and first post-fascist prime minister.
    The coalition also features the far-right League of anti-migrant former interior minister Matteo Salvini, which is currently polling at around 12.5%, second to FdI's 23.8% and compared to the 8% currently enjoyed by three-time ex-premier and media mogul Berlusconi's FI.
    Salvini repeated Tuesday that Meloni would be premier if her party gets one vote more than the League, which appears a certainty right now.
    President Sergio Mattarella is expected to tap the leader of the winning bloc as premier-candidate.
    Three-time former prime minister and media mogul Berlusconi, who served a two-year office ban for tax fraud and will be 86 four days after the election, meanwhile said Wednesday he had bowed to pressure from supporters and would be standing again, in the Senate this time. (ANSA).