News Analysis: Unlikely partnership between Italy's Renzi, Berlusconi starting to show cracks

The Italian government's arduous process of picking a successor to departed President Giorgio Napolitano is exposing cracks in the unlikely alliance between Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the supporters of controversial billionaire, former prime minister, and one-time Renzi rival Silvio Berlusconi.

For years, Renzi's center-left party and Berlusconi's center-right party stood in opposition to each other. But the two struck an improbable deal last year, giving Renzi's government a strong parliamentary majority despite the opposition from comic-turned-activist Beppe Grillo, whose supporters have the second largest parliamentary bloc.

But a large minority of Renzi's supporters are opposed to a coalition that includes Berlusconi, who was kicked out of the Senate after being convicted to tax fraud and false accounting.

Now the fault lines are beginning to show in the discussions over the next president, where Renzi must decide between picking a candidate that appeals to the left-wing part of his party and one that appeals to Berlusconi. Whichever he does, he will have to do it without alienating the other.

"If Renzi manages to pick a new president and get the candidate approved without alienating either the left-wing of his party or the Berlusconi camp, it will be a political masterpiece," University of Bologna political scientist Daniela Giannetti told Xinhua.

The process got underway Thursday, with Renzi backing Sergio Mattarella, a low profile but respected judge from Italy's Constitutional Court. The choice seems to be a nod to the left wing among his supporters. Napolitano himself gave a vote of support to Mattarella Thursday, calling him a man of "complete loyalty and propriety."

But the issue is unlikely to resolved before Saturday, when the requirement of a two-third majority of the more than 1,000 lawmakers who will vote for the president will be dropped to a simple 50-percent-plus-one majority. Given the dramatic nature of Italian politics, it is possible that a new candidate could be nominated at that point.

It is also possible Berlusconi could step in to assert his influence at that point.

Last week, when Berlusconi's supporters backed an electoral reform plan that could lessen their power in the future by guaranteeing a parliamentary majority to the strongest party, many analysts said Berlusconi might have been biting his tongue in order to have a central role in picking Napolitano's successor. If that is true, Berlusconi has not yet played that hand.

In the meantime, whispers of a split in Renzi's party have been making the rounds. Former party leader Gugliemo Epifani this week criticized Renzi for "collaborating with everyone except for a significant section of his own party."

There has been growing speculation in the Italian media that Berlusconi's presence may drive that section of the party to break away.

The reform-minded Renzi has to try to keep everyone content. According to Federico Castorina from the think tank Cultura Democratica, Renzi would have a majority without Berlusconi but not one strong enough to pass Renzi's reforms.

"With a simple majority, Renzi's reforms will require a national referendum before then can go into force," Castorina said in an interview. "With the two-thirds majority he'll have with his party intact and Berlusconi's support, a parliamentary vote will be enough." Endit