Berlusconi Boycotts Peace Pact as His Italian Coalition Creaks

by Dramelin 7:00 AM 0 comments

Italians go to the polls on March 4 with voters divided over the country’s relationship with the European Union, taxes, and immigration.
Here’s your daily guide to the latest news.
Governing with right-wing hardliners is looking like an increasingly tricky prospect for Silvio Berlusconi.
At the moment he won’t even share a stage with his supposed coalition allies.
  The anti-immigrant Brothers of Italy called a rally yesterday to shore up the fractious right-wing alliance with a new pledge of unity.
But, as John Follain reports, both Berlusconi and his ally-cum-rival Matteo Salvini of the Northern League failed to show.
The coalition was leading in polls before a blackout kicked in on Saturday.
The latest controversy for the ruling Democrat Party leads Corriere della Sera – the son of a local leader stepped down after an aide was covertly filmed discussing kickbacks in Salerno, one of the party’s few strongholds in the south of Italy.
Five Stars’s troubles are also mounting.
Coast Guard Captain Gregorio De Falco was one of the movement’s star signings for this election –  heshot to fame in 2012 when he berated the captain of a sinking cruise boat for abandoning ship.
Now his wife is accusing him of domestic violence.
He denies the claim.
  Bot attacks have become a feature of modern elections and they are not holding back in Italy.
Chiara Albanese has been speaking to the volunteers trying to keep track of fake Twitter accounts working to boost support for extremists.
  The spending promises of the main parties come under scrutiny in Italy’s main newspapers.
 La Repubblica andLa Stampa conclude that Europe’s largest pile of government debt would reach 140 percent of GDP – it’s 134 percent at the moment, and dwarfs even Greece’s in absolute terms.
More food for thought for international investors waking up to Italian election risk.
 Options-market traders are starting to focus on the election result too.
AsVassilis Karamanis reports, implied volatility on the euro is elevated for the weeks around the vote, a period that also includes a final decision on whether Germany can form a coalition government, and an ECB policy meeting.
Who’s tweeting: Giorgia Meloni, leader of a party with Fascist roots and an ally of Berlusconi, vowed to follow the footsteps of Hungarian leader Viktor Orban and curb billionaire George Soros’s operations in Italy.
In case you missed it, prime ministerial hopeful Antonio Tajani said Berlusconi and his allies are no longer euroskeptic and current premier Paolo Gentiloni has been to Berlin to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In Gentiloni’s Tuscan heartlands, his party’s traditional base is disillusioned.