BROADCASTS.com

Former European bank chief Mario Draghi agreed Wednesday to try to form a non-political government to steer Italy through the coronavirus pandemic after last-ditch negotiations among political parties failed to produce a viable governing coalition.
The task won't be easy, though, given the populist party with the most seats in Parliament said it won't support a Draghi government and the right-wing party with the highest poll numbers is pressing for an early election.
Financial markets nevertheless welcomed indications that Italy's latest political crisis might soon get resolved - at least for the next few months. Draghi expressed assurances that he could fulfill the task Italy's president assigned him.
“I am confident that from the talks with the parties and the groups in Parliament and social forces, unity will come out, and with it, the capacity to give a responsible and positive answer to the appeal of the president of the republic,” Draghi told reporters at the presidential palace.
President Sergio Mattarella had turned to Draghi, who is credited with having saved the euro during Europe's debt crisis, after talks failed to find broader support for caretaker Premier Giuseppe Conte’s coalition of the 5-Star Movement and Democratic Party.
Conte was forced to resign last month after ex-Premier Matteo Renzi pulled support of his small, centrist Italy Alive party. Renzi, whose nickname is “il rottamatore,” or “the demolisher,” complained among other things about Conte’s plan to spend more than 200 billion euros ( $240 billion) in EU pandemic recovery funds and loans.
Draghi told reporters he accepted the mandate knowing that Italy faces the multiple challenges of a health care crisis, a national vaccination campaign and an economic recession. At the same time, though, he said Italy will have “extraordinary" resources from the European Union to try to help the economy relaunch.
“It's a difficult moment," Draghi said. But he added: “We have the chance to do a lot for our country."
During his tenure at the European Central Bank, Draghi became known as “Super Mario" for using new and sometimes unorthodox policy tools to solve the vexing debt crisis and other problems.
“Draghi to the rescue,” said Christopher Dembik, senior European economist at Germany's Berenberg bank, predicting that Draghi would eventually succeed in forming a broad-based government.
His greatest hurdle, though, will be securing support from the 5-Star Movement, which was the senior partner in Conte's government. The 5-Stars had insisted that Conte remain premier and bitterly resented Renzi’s power play that brought him down.
Five-star leader Vito Crimi said the movement would only support a political government. “As such, it will not vote in favor of a technical government headed by Mario Draghi,” Crimi said in a statement.
But the Democrats were lobbying the 5-Star Movement to back Draghi, given that the alternative - an early election - would likely send both parties packing and favor the right-wing, according to recent polls.
“I trust that reflection will make possible tomorrow what appears complex today," Conte's Democrat culture minister, Dario Franceschini, told Huffington Post's Italian edition.
For the 5-Stars, a Draghi government imposed by Mattarella poses an almost existential dilemma. The anti-establishment, populist movement emerged as a potent political force in part as a response to Italy’s last technocratic government led by Mario Monti, in 2011-2013.
As a result, a “Super Mario" success story is by no means a given, said Giovanni Orsina, head of the Luiss School of Government in Rome.
“If they (the 5-Stars and the League) are going to somehow support Draghi then the government I think can be born," he said in an interview. “Otherwise there is the possibility that Draghi will get back to the president of the republic Mattarella and say ‘I am sorry, I cannot actually form a government.'”
Under Conte, the 5-Stars had headlined two successiv...