Italy has a new government coalition of populists and Democrats

ROME — Premier Giuseppe Conte forged a new coalition government Wednesday that teams up the populist 5-Star Movement and center-left Democrats in an alliance aimed at shutting fast-rising right-wing forces from power.

Six days after President Sergio Mattarella asked him to try to form a new government, Conte reported back to the presidential Quirinal Palace that he had succeeded.

Conte told reporters that he and the new ministers will “dedicate our best energies, our abilities, our passion to making Italy better in the interest of all Italians.”

The prime minister’s first, 14-month-old government collapsed last month when anti-migrant leader Matteo Salvini yanked his League party out of Conte’s coalition.

Buoyed by months of rising popularity in opinion polls and the European Parliament elections, Salvini had been betting his surprise pullout would prompt early elections that could have brought him the premiership.

But after days of haggling, Parliament’s largest opposition force, the Democratic Party, and the 5-Star Movement, long bitter rivals, worked out a deal to team up in a government again headed by Conte.

The premier, who before he headed his first government, in June 2018, was a novice to politics with a career as a law professor and mediation specialist. He considers himself non-partisan, although acknowledges sympathizing with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement.

Mattarella reminded journalists that Conte still faces one crucial hurdle. The coalition must win mandatory confidence votes in the legislature’s two chambers. Together, the Democrats, 5-Stars and a tiny left-wing party should muster a slim majority.

Ministers will be sworn in on Thursday morning.

Frances D’Emilio is an Associated Press writer.