(Bloomberg) -- Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi reiterated his call for European Central Bank head Mario Draghi to serve as premier of the country’s next government.
“I’ve said in the past, without consulting him, that Draghi would be the right man for a position of high responsibility in Italy,” Berlusconi said in an interview with the Naples newspaper Il Mattino, cited by newswire Aska. “I repeat it today and I hope it can happen.”
Draghi has five months left in office at the ECB. Berlusconi, who has pressed Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini to ditch his ruling coalition ally the Five Star Movement and seek to force early elections, said the next administration should be “chosen by the Italians.”
Despite escalating tensions with Five Star ahead of May 26 European parliamentary elections, Salvini has so far resisted calls from senior figures in his rightist League party to pull the plug on the coalition. Some want him to forge an alliance with the center-right including Berlusconi, with whom Salvini’s League has governed in the past.
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