The anti-establishment 5-Star
Movement (M5S) and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) agreed
Wednesday on outgoing and caretaker premier Giuseppe Conte
heading up a new M5S-PD government - and Conte was therefore
summoned by President Sergio Mattarella to the presidential
palace at 9:30 Thursday to be given a mandate as
premier-designate to formally find support for a new government.
M5S leader Luigi Di Maio said talks must now focus on the
government programme, which PD leader Nicola Zingaretti said
would feature fairer and greener policies.
Di Maio's insistence on keeping the deputy premiership and
the M5S's plan to put the government to a vote on its online
Rousseau platform are still controversial.
The Pd said the M5S could not have both the premiership, in
Conte, and the deputy premiership.
Di Maio said after government crisis consultations with
Mattarella that there was a deal with the PD for Conte to take
up the reins again at the head of a new M5S-PD executive.
He said that the M5S would not "duck its commitments".
Di Maio said "we feel guaranteed" by Conte "on the policies
we want to implement".
He said that left and right were "outdated" categories and
the M5S was "post-ideological".
On the new government, Di Maio said that programmes would
come first, "ahead of names" for the various posts.
He said there had been "polemics" on his insistence on
remaining deputy premier but stressed that former partner the
nationalist League party had offered him the premiership in
exchange for a renewed government pact.
Di Maio said Us President Donald Trump's support for Conte,
voiced Tuesday, showed that "the path is the right one".
He said it had been thanks to him that Conte, a professional
lawyer and academic with no political experience, had become
premier at the head of the 14-month populist M5S-League
government.
Earlier the PD said yes to a government with the M5S under
outgoing premier Conte, the so-called 'Conte #2', that would be
a "new challenge" and usher in fairer, greener and more
redistributive policies.
PD leader Nicola Zingaretti said after consultations with
Mattarella that the PD had agreed to the M5S naming lawyer Conte
as next premier.
Zingaretti said that the PD thought Italy needed a government
that would mark "a turning point and discontinuity" with the
last populist government.
He said that the new government would not take up the baton
from the previous 5-Star-League administration, and would start
a "fresh challenge".
The new government would hopefully usher in a "new season,
civil, social and political".
He said the economic recipe would be "redistributive and
green".
"We have the courage to try," he said.
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