Italian PM Draghi looks doomed after parties snub confidence vote

By Giuseppe Fonte and Angelo Amante

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's government imploded on Wednesday when some of Prime Minister Mario Draghi's main coalition partners snubbed a confidence vote he had called to try to end divisions and renew their alliance.

On the right, Forza Italia and the League parties said they would not take part in the vote in the upper house of parliament.

They were joined in their boycott by the populist 5-Star Movement which also said it would shun the vote, having set off Italy's latest political crisis with a similar boycott last week.

Draghi had tendered his resignation last week, but President Sergio Mattarella turned him down and told him to go before parliament to see if he could revive the 18-month-old administration.

Speaking to the upper house, Draghi set out a series of issues facing Italy ranging from the war in Ukraine to social inequality and rising prices, and said political parties needed to get behind him if he was to steer the country to elections due in the first half of 2023.

"The only way, if we want to stay together, is to rebuild this pact, with courage, altruism and credibility," Draghi said in an uncompromising speech to the Senate, adding that many Italians wanted the coalition to carry on.

But his call for unity appeared to have fallen on deaf ears, as conservative parties within the coalition said they would remain in the cabinet only if 5-Star was excluded.

If Draghi decides there is not sufficient unity in his coalition, he will almost certainly resign, opening the way for early elections in September or October.

"The Italian parliament has gone against the will of the people," the head of Italy's centre-left Democratic Party (PD), another coalition party, said on Wednesday.

"Italians will show themselves to be wiser at the ballot box than their politicians," PD chief Enrico Letta wrote on Twitter (NYSE:TWTR), signalling that he expected early elections to be called to break the impasse.