Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party and the conservative coalition - Italy' biggest political bloc - on Monday urged a snap election and changes to the current electoral law to ensure the political force that wins the most votes has working majority in parliament.
"The only serious option now is to hold fresh elections swiftly with an electoral law that gives a "majority bonus"of seats to whoever wins more votes than anyone else," Salvini told Italy's Radio 24.
"The League and Five-Star have a majority in the lower house of Parliament and in the Senate, " Salvini stated, referring to his would-be coalition partner, the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement, which is Italy's largest party.
"We are a parliamentary Republic, or at least I thought so until yesterday," Salvini said.
Salvini's comments came after the League and Five-Star's populist premier designate Giuseppe Conte on Sunday gave up his bid to form a government when Italy's pro-European president Sergio Mattarella refused to accept the League's candidate economy minister, Paolo Savona.
Mattarella said he had agreed to all of the League-Five-Star's cabinet lineup except 81-year-old Savona, a eurosceptic who called Italy's entry into the single European currency "an historic mistake".
Five-Star Luigi Di Maio has called for Mattarella to be impeached over his unpredecented move to exercise his constitutional powers and quash Savona’s nomination.
Italy has been in political limbo for almost three months since the inconclusive 4 March national polls in which populists made strong gains but no party or bloc won an outright majority.
The planned Five-Star-League tie-up was the closest Italy had come to forming a new government after several rounds of talks with party leaders collapsed amid a seemingly irreconcilable mesh of demands.
