Italy’s President Is Playing for Time
- Mattarella hopes to find agreement as election rancor fades
- Official says president could wait three months for deal
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From his study, Sergio Mattarella looks out on a prize collection of cacti in the manicured gardens of the presidential palace in Rome. After Italians elected a hung parliament with rival populist forces each claiming the right to lead, the head of state faces an equally prickly search for a new government.
Matteo Salvini’s anti-migrant League supplanted Silvio Berlusconi as the dominant force on the Italian right, but their coalition is still short of an outright majority. Luigi Di Maio says the Five Star Movement’s status as the single biggest party gives him the right to govern. Though he doesn’t have the votes either.