ROME: Centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani said yesterday that only a mentally ill person would want Italy’s top job as he scrambled against the clock to secure enough support to form a government in the recession-hit country.
His comments came during last-minute talks with political parties before time runs out for Bersani, who was asked by Italy’s president last week to try to forge a coalition but has been unable to strike a deal with his rivals. “Only a mentally ill person could have an itching desire to govern right now,” Bersani said during talks with the anti-politics 5-Star movement, which he has repeatedly tried — and failed — to woo.
“I want things to be clear: I am ready to assume a huge amount of responsibility, but I ask everyone else to take on a little bit themselves,” he said.
Business leaders and trade unions sounded the alarm this week over the parlous state of the eurozone’s third largest economy.
Italy is suffering its longest recession for 20 years and young people have been hit particularly hard, with unemployment rates hitting almost 39 percent in January while the economy is forecast to shrink by 1.3 percent this year.
“It is clear that the political instability is not helping,” Marcello Messori, economics professor at the Luiss University in Rome told AFP.
He said he was “very concerned” that the country’s economic health would be
neglected as Italy’s politicians wrangled.
Bersani has hoped to persuade individual members of other parties to give their support, proposing a limited programme of urgently-needed reforms in exchange for their backing at a confidence vote.
Proposals on the table include a cut in taxes and expenses of political parties, and a reform to the complicated electoral law which has been blamed for landing the parties in the current crisis.
Yesterday, the 5-Star said it refused to back the former Communist. AFP
