ROME (AP) â€" Italian Premier Matteo Renzi pitched for support in Parliament Monday ahead of mandatory confidence votes on his brand-new government but offered scant details to back his bet he can get the country back to work again while the last three premiers failed.
Renzi leads a broad coalition including his dominant center-left Democrats, centrists, and conservative forces which used to back Silvio Berlusconi, the scandal-scarred ex-premier.
In the Senate, Renzi should be able to muster a slim majority on his three-day-old government.
But there has been loud grumbling among his own Democrats over Renzis heavy-handed tactics to wrest the premiership from fellow Democrat Enrico Letta. His predecessor led a coalition with the same tense partners for 10 months, but Renzi engineered his ouster after industrialists and union leaders grew impatient with tentative efforts to energize the economy after years of stagnation.
Renzi said debt-laden Italy must heal its public finances not because Germanys Angela Merkel or the European Central Bank chief want that, but because "its our children" who seek a future. He said Italy must slash payroll taxes to encourage hiring, but didnt say how Italy would recoup the lower tax revenues.
The new premier faces "pressure to show swift signs of progress on his ambitious reform program," given that unemployment for January is likely to have stayed at 12.7 percent, said CMC Markets UK analyst Michael Hewson ahead of the speech. Youth unemployment hovers at 40 percent.
Noting the tepid Senate applause, Senator Paola Taverna echoed other opposition leaders when she said Renzi offered "nothing concrete."
In the second confidence vote, in the lower Chamber of Deputies Tuesday, Renzis coalition has a comfortable majority.
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