Italy: Beppe Grillo condemns election of president

The leader of Italy’s anti- establishment 5-Star Movement, Beppe Grillo, has denounced the re-election of 87-year-old president Giorgio Napolitano as a desperate attempt to retain power by a discredited establishment.

Beppe Grillo arrives at a press conference yesterday, where he denounced the reelection of Giorgio Napolitano. Picture: AP

Italy is still without a government two months after a general election, has experienced little economic growth in 20 years and is grappling with the highest level of unemployment in decades.

Talks on the formation of a new administration are expected to resume this coming week, with the parties under pressure from Mr Napolitano to reach a deal.

The broad, right-left agreement on Saturday to hand Mr Napolitano another seven-year mandate could end Italy’s political impasse, which resulted after no single force emerged from February’s election with a workable majority in parliament.

Mr Grillo’s movement backed Stefano Rodota, a left-wing academic, while Mr Napolitano was elected by Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right bloc, outgoing prime minister Mario Monti’s centrist movement, and the badly divided centre-left Democratic Party (PD).

Mr Grillo, whose vow to kick out the old guard allowed his 5-Star Movement to win one in four votes in its first national election, yesterday called the presidential vote “a cunning little institutional coup” designed to keep the old parties in power.

“They have stolen a year of time. I don’t think we can accept this,” he told a press conference.

The 87-year-old Mr Napolitano’s re-election – the first time an Italian president has been asked to serve a second term – gives him the option of calling a snap parliamentary election, allowing him more leverage to pressure the parties to reach a deal.

Mr Napolitano now has the power to dissolve parliament, which he did not have in the final months of his first term.

He is likely to spell out his strategy in an address to parliament today, but he has already made it clear that he favours forming a government to avoid a potentially destabilising new election.

Rocco Buttiglione, a lower house legislator and high-ranking member of Mr Monti’s Civic Choice bloc, said he expected an agreement on a government within a week.

“Now we must work to construct a broad government that will essentially be a replay of the Monti government,” Mr Buttiglione said.

“This government must last years, not months. If we go back to elections before the bitter medicine has had time to take effect, it’s clear that voters will back Grillo.”

Thousands protested angrily outside parliament after Saturday’s presidential vote by MPs.

Mr Grillo backed out of a plan to join the protests himself, saying yesterday that he had feared the situation could turn violent, and toned down the terms in which he condemned the vote, which he had initially denounced as a full-blown “coup d’etat”.

Commentators have quickly began speculating on what the next government could look like should Mr Napolitano succeed in pressuring the parties into forming a government. The result of Saturday’s vote was widely heralded as a victory for Mr Berlusconi. The 76-year-old media magnate, who was forced from office at the height of the debt crisis in 2011, now leads in opinion polls.