Renzi hits back at Grillo's 'coup' claim

Premier says ex comedian 'suffering sunstroke'

(ANSA) - Rome, July 25 - Premier Matteo Renzi used a play on words to suggest anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) leader Beppe Grillo was suffering sunstroke when he claimed the government was staging a coup by using debate-limiting measures to combat obstructionism against its Senate reform bill. "Grillo says ours is a coup," Renzi said via his Twitter account, @matteorenzi. "Yours is sunstroke". The Italian for coup is "colpo di stato" while the term for sunstroke is "colpo di sole". "It's called a coup. Mussolini had more scruples. He didn't call it reform," Grillo had written on in his popular blog, which gave life to the Internet-based M5S in 2009.

The firebrand comedian-turned-politician proceeded to call for the president of Italy to step down. "The director of this disaster is (President Giorgio) Napolitano, who should...resign immediately. The M5S will not have any contact from now on with a man who has abdicated from his role as guarantor of the Constitution". Napolitano spoke out in favour of the reform package earlier this week. Grillo's vitriol follows on the walk-out Thursday of some 100 M5S and opposition Left Ecology Freedom (SEL) lawmakers from parliament. They marched to Napolitano's office and staged a protest outside the presidential palace after government parties said that the controversial debate-cutting 'bear trap' to limit the duration of speeches in parliament would be used on opponents who are filibustering.

Opponents to the plan to turn the Senate into a leaner assembly of local-government representatives have tabled around 7,800 amendments to the bill in a time-wasting tactic that meant that only a handful have been voted on since the package reached the floor of the Upper House this week. The government wants to see the bill, which aims to make passing legislation easier while saving public money, complete its first reading in the Senate before parliament's summer recess next month.

The bill has the backing of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of the opposition centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party, but is encountering staunch resistance from M5S, SEL, the Northern League, and from within FI and the ruling Democratic Party of Premier Matteo Renzi. "They're saying sunstroke, we say P2," Grillo retorted on Twitter in a reference to the P2 covert Masonic lodge scandal that rocked Italy in the early 1980's. Also on Friday, Renzi confirmed that his government will hold a public referendum on its Senate revamp. "After 4 votes in parliament, we'll hold a referendum," Renzi tweeted. "Why are the opposition shouting? What are they afraid of? Of the votes of the Italians?".