Former Democratic Party (PD) MP
Stefano Fassina said Monday his new leftwing party does not rule
out supporting a 5-Star Movement (M5S) candidate for Rome mayor.
"I do not rule out the possibility...if the candidate's
program is more compatible with our idea of the development of a
city," said Fassina, a former economy minister who left the PD
in disagreement with Premier Matteo Renzi and whose new Italian
Left (SI) party took shape with new parliamentary caucuses in
alliance with the small leftwing Left Ecology and Freedom (SEL)
party over the weekend.
The anti-establishment M5S led by foul-mouthed ex-comedian
Beppe Grillo has allied itself with Britain's rightwing populist
UKIP party in the European Parliament, and is currently Italy's
second-largest party after the ruling PD.
"The so-called Italian Left pronounces itself ready to
support Grillo's populist right-wing in Rome," PD President
Matteo Orfini tweeted in response.
"The PD calls us fascists, (ex-premier Silvio) Berlusconi
calls us Hitlerian cretins, and the Italian Left is ready to
vote for us!" M5S MP Michele Dell'Orco wrote on Facebook,
"I've lost the plot, call three ambulances...they're not
well".
Former PD MP Alfredo D'Attorre announced that Italian Left
was forthcoming on Friday.
He said the new formation will include just over 30
Lower House MPs and 10 Senators, and will officially turn itself
into a party in 2016.
"This is the birth of a new, non-radical, pluralistic...
left, which will finally offer a home to the tens of thousands
of voters who have found themselves homeless," he said.
Renzi's ruling center-left PD has long been fighting
internal leftwing dissenters over its labor and
welfare policies as well as its Italicum electoral reform bill.
Ex-premier and leading leftist PD dissenter Pier Luigi
Bersani told La Repubblica paper in an interview Friday that he
disagreed with the choice of leaving the party, because this
will drive disaffected voters into the arms of the M5S.
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