Italy’s center-right alliance is set to win elections in the southern region of Molise, as President Sergio Mattarella prepares to make his next attempt to break a seven-week paralysis in the quest for a new government.
Voters in the mountainous area, Italy’s second-smallest region, backed the center-right candidate with 45% and Five Star Movement’s representative with 37% in Sunday’s elections, with two thirds of votes counted, data on the region’s website show, Bloomberg reported.
Leaders from Matteo Salvini, who heads a center-right alliance and the euroskeptic League, to his junior ally ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi and to Luigi Di Maio of the anti-establishment Five Star flocked to campaign in Molise in a bid to strengthen their hand in the government talks in Rome.
Mattarella was expected to make a new move as early as Monday after a mediator mission by Senate speaker Elisabetta Casellati, a family lawyer by profession, failed to show a government of the center-right and Five Star is possible. The center-right led Five Star in the March 4 general elections but both are short of a majority.
Mattarella’s next options include giving Casellati a few extra days, or appointing Roberto Fico, speaker of the lower house, as a new mediator—possibly with a broader task to find out if any working majority can be formed.
Mattarella is keen to avoid elections this year and could at some stage seek to engineer a government of national unity, urging all parties to support a figure possibly from outside politics.
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