EURO ZONE DEBT CRISIS:PRIME MINISTER in waiting, former European commissioner Mario Monti appeared to edge closer to government office yesterday when he received a warm ovation in the Italian senate, on the day the upper house ratified an emergency austerity budget designed to reassure both EU partners and the bond markets.
Nominated a life senator by state president Giorgio Napolitano on Wednesday evening, Prof Monti was ostensibly taking up his senate seat for the first time. In reality, the sustained applause that greeted Prof Monti and the greeting offered to him by senate speaker Renato Schifani, both suggested that this was something more than just the first day in parliament for a new senator.
If all goes according to plan, President Napolitano is expected to call on Prof Monti today to form the next Italian government. The current prime minister, media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, will resign this afternoon, as soon as the emergency austerity budget is rushed through the lower house of parliament and becomes law.
Ever since Mr Berlusconi effectively lost his parliamentary majority in a critical vote last Tuesday, it has been an open secret that Mr Napolitano favours Prof Monti to succeed him. An economist, Prof Monti is expected to head an emergency “technical” government for at least the next six months, if not all the way through to the end of the legislature in the spring of 2013.
As he prepared to take office, Prof Monti had a two-hour meeting with the president on Thursday evening. Ostensibly, the president wished to congratulate the 68-year-old professor on his “timely” nomination, but most commentators believe the two men considered the options for the formation of a new government.
If tomorrow’s provisional timetable is respected, then Mr Napolitano is expected to open government consultations with all the parties on Sunday morning. Unlike on many past occasions when such consultations could drag on for days, the president hopes to wrap them up within the day, thus being in a position to give Prof Monti a formal mandate to form the new government by the end of the day.
Prof Monti will then hold his own formal talks on Monday morning in the expectation that he can present his government team to the president, also by the end of the day. By the standards of the average post-war Italian government crisis, this is speed-of-light stuff and it could well be that various slip-ups will yet undermine these best-laid plans.
Whilst most commentators remain convinced the speedy approval of the emergency budget, followed by the appointment of an experienced non-party technocrat like Prof Monti, will reassure both the markets and international opinion, important questions remain unanswered on the composition of the new government and the party support it will receive.
For example, Mr Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party remains bitterly divided between those who support an emergency government and those who would rather force an immediate early general election. Yesterday two Berlusconi cabinet ministers, Franco Frattini and Ignazio La Russo, exchanged insults on the matter.
Mr Frattini called Mr La Russo a “fascist” (the defence minister comes from the ranks of the ex-Fascist MSI) who had failed to understand the gravity of the moment. Asked for his response to his cabinet colleague, Mr La Russo said: “Fratt . . . frate who?”
While the opposition Democratic Party (PD) is unwavering in its support of a Monti technical government, it is less convinced about just what role to play in such an executive. Senior party figures have pointed out that were the PD to play a prominent role in an executive that is guaranteed to introduce only unpopular, cost-cutting measures, it would cost the party dear at the next elections.
Given the reservations of the two biggest parties in parliament, not to mention the difficulty of convincing them to work well together, many in parliament believe Mr Monti will opt for a non-party political government comprising “technicians”, not deputies.
The pressure on Rome was underlined when Klaus Regling, chief of Europe’s bailout fund, yesterday expressed confidence that his organisation can help Italy if necessary.
"Time is running out for Italy to reassure markets . . . The country must appoint a functioning government as soon as possible," he told German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung.