WORLD
President of Italy Nominates Center-Left Official as Premier
Baku, April 25 (AZERTAC). After months of political paralysis capped by a week of turmoil, President Giorgio Napolitano on Wednesday named Enrico Letta, a high-ranking official in the center-left Democratic Party, to form a broad coalition government to try to steer Italy out of political chaos and its worst recession since World War II.
And former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the great survivor of Italian politics, emerged as a kingmaker by default, having outlasted most of his adversaries.
“It`s undeniable that this is a victory for Berlusconi,” said Giovanni Orsina, the deputy director of the School of Government at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome. “He got what he asked for, from Napolitano`s re-election to a political government with broad, bipartisan support.”
In accepting his mandate Wednesday, Mr. Letta said that he would focus on employment and growth — unemployment is over 11 percent in Italy, rising to 38 percent for young people — but also that he hoped the tide in Europe was shifting against austerity policies that have deepened an economic slowdown in Southern Europe.
He cited the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, who in a speech this week had said that while reining in budget deficits through austerity was “fundamentally right,” it had “reached its limits” and needed “the minimum of political and social support.”
Mr. Letta is a Democratic Party moderate, former government minister and former member of the European Parliament. At 46, he is poised to become one of Europe`s youngest prime ministers, but he is less a new-guard politician than a compromise candidate palatable to his own imploding center-left party and to the center right — a young facade on a political edifice in the throes of collapse.
“On paper, Letta is a good candidate,” Mr. Orsina said. “It`s a new generation taking power. But they certainly chose the most moderate young man, somebody who comes from the establishment.”
“It`s going to be hard for him to change the bureaucratic structure, the state machine, because that is the main issue,” Mr. Orsina added, referring to a system whose members have traditionally been appointed through patronage. “If your pan has a hole, changing the handle will do little good.”
Mr. Letta must propose a cabinet and present it to Mr. Napolitano and then Parliament for a confidence vote in the coming days. The strength and duration of his government will depend on how broad a coalition he is able to forge.