Chaos In Italian Parties As Presidential Vote Limps On

It’s another day for Italy’s Parliament to elect a new president but the parties remained deeply divided over a possible candidate, with the leaders struggling to control their lawmakers.

Saturday to elect a new president,
The week-long search to find a replacement for Sergio Mattarella, whose seven-year mandate expires on Feb. 3, has laid bare the fragility of Italian politics and highlighted a failure of leadership in the main center-right and center-left blocs.

Seeking a name in the chaos, top-selling daily Corriere Della Sera said on its front-page headline. More vetoes than votes, Catholic daily L’Avvenire wrote.

The heads of both the rightist League party and the 5-Star Movement, which is allied to the center-left, said late Friday they wanted a woman to become president for the first time and indicated that a deal was at hand.

Political sources said both groups were backing Elisabetta Belloni, who heads the secret services, but the news provoked a sharp backlash from other parties, splintering the center-right bloc and sowing dissent in 5-Star ranks.

The president is a robust determine in Italy, who will get to nominate prime ministers and is commonly known as on to resolve political crises in the euro zone’s third-largest financial system, the place governments survive barely a 12 months on common.

Unlike in the United States or France, the place heads of state get elected in a preferred vote, in Italy, 1,009 parliamentarians and regional representatives selected the winner in a secret poll.