ROME (Reuters) – The name of Italy’s prime minister doesn’t matter, but their plans do, the leader of the centre-right League party Matteo Salvini said on Wednesday when asked about a possible government led by former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi.
“We have five priorities and we will decide according to those,” Salvini told Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview. “As I said, the point is not the name of the person. He has to tell us what he intends to do”.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella has summoned Draghi for talks on Wednesday and looks certain to ask him to form a government of national unity to tackle the coronavirus and economic crises.
Salvini said his party didn’t want the new government to raise taxes, but sought for policies to focus on jobs and pensions.
Draghi’s name has emerged as a potential premier in recent weeks as political turmoil combines with the health and economic emergencies.
But it is not clear which parties in Italy’s deeply fractured parliament would support an administration he would head.
“Certainly authoritative names and answers are needed in an exceptional crisis like this”, the Senate leader of the centrist party Italia Viva Davide Faraone told La Stampa in an interview, urging parties to do “well and quick”
(Reporting by Maria Pia Quaglia, editing by Giulia Segreti and Michael Perry)
