MATTEO RENZI, the leader of Italy’s leftist Democratic Party (PD), says he hopes to have his new government ready this weekend after nearly two days of talks with political parties, which ended on a fierce encounter with comic-activist Beppe Grillo.

    Renzi told reporters his coalition would be based on the same left-right alliance that supported Enrico Letta, the outgoing prime minister overthrown in a party-engineered coup last Thursday. He said he hoped to report back to Giorgio Napolitano, head of state, on Saturday for the government to be sworn in.

    Visibly enjoying himself at his first press conference since Letta’s departure, Renzi, the former mayor of Florence who has never been elected to the national parliament, set out the ambitious agenda for his first 100 days in office that he outlined Monday.

    This includes swift passage of a new electoral law and launch of constitutional reforms, followed by reforms of the labor market, the tax system and the public administration. Renzi added the element of changes to the justice system, a theme dear to former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and center-right parties.

    Renzi said he hoped that by the time Rome takes up the rotating EU presidency in July, Italy would be in the position that it “will be able to ask what it wants of Europe, instead of just what Europe wants of Italy.”

    Minutes earlier, sparks flew at a tense live-streamed meeting with Grillo, leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, the largest opposition party, which won a quarter of the vote in inconclusive elections a year ago.

    Grillo tore into Renzi, saying he lacked ideas, credibility and democratic legitimacy and dismissing him as a “young-old” pawn of business and banks.

    Renzi answered in kind, saying he was not there for a publicity stunt to promote Grillo’s next theatrical tour. Their tense exchange lasted just a few minutes until both men rose to their feet.

    Renzi is just 39 years old and has never been a member of parliament. And yet he triggered the downfall of Letta, calling on the PD to back a new government.

    The young party leader is sometimes called Il Rottamatore (“The Scrapper”). The nickname refers to his call to scrap the entire Italian political establishment, which is widely regarded as discredited, tainted by corruption, and as having failed the nation decade after decade.

    His rise has been seen as a sign of much-needed generational change, and he enjoys by far the highest approval rating of any politician in the country. He is, in his own words, “hugely ambitious.”

    Renzi presents himself as a break with the past in every way.

    He exudes a restless energy. He likes to pace the stage in black jeans and attends meetings in shirt sleeves. He travels around either in a small car or on a bicycle.

    He is relaxed and easy — fast and fluent as he speaks without notes, ranging across Italy’s many problems, and offering broad-brush solutions.

    As he left the presidential palace after his nomination as prime minister, Renzi promised “all the courage, commitment, energy and enthusiasm of which I am capable.”

    He always seeks to instill a belief that politics can be done differently, that change is possible.

    He once finished a televised debate by saying he would offer something very rare in Italy: “Hope.”

    “People are weary and disillusioned,” he said. “They don’t believe anymore. I believe, and that’s why I do politics — because I still believe.”

    Winning control of the PD in December 2013 was the key step in Renzi’s journey to the prime ministerial palace.

    And it did not take long for tensions between the new head of the party and Letta, the deputy leader of the PD, to come to the fore.

    The signs were visible within weeks of Renzi taking over PD leader. In January, he invited Berlusconi, thrown out of parliament but still in charge of the opposition Forza Italia (FI) movement, to his party headquarters to discuss a deal on much-needed electoral reform.

    The move drew anger from some on the left of the party, but Renzi was having none of it.

    “It’s a contradiction in terms to say ‘You should have spoken to FI but not to Berlusconi.’ Should I have spoken to [Berlusconi’s fiancee’s dog] Dudu?”

    By February it had become clear that he was focusing more on the future of Letta’s PD-dominated government and its coalition of small center-right parties.

    After a dinner with Napolitano, Renzi was quoted as saying the government’s batteries were running low and a decision had to be made on whether they needed recharging — or changing.

    It did not take long for that decision to be taken and for the party coup to be over.

    He went to see Letta at the prime ministerial palace, saying afterwards only that he would make his intentions clear the next day.

    In a speech at the party headquarters, he thanked the prime minister but said the country was at a crossroads: there was an urgent need for a new phase with a new executive. Hours later, Letta said he would step down.

    The rise of Matteo Renzi, brash, thrusting and a hugely confident communicator, on his way to becoming Italy’s youngest ever prime minister, has come at a bewildering speed.

    Despite his popularity among voters, Renzi’s bid to become prime minister will remind many Italians of the sequence of revolving-door governments that afflicted post-war Italian politics.

    There are many on the harder left of his party who have ideological reservations about him.

    And some figures in the party’s establishment will have been uncomfortable with his ascent to the top of the party. He once called for scrapping the “old guard.”

    There are echoes in all this of the early years of the former British leader Tony Blair, and his capture of the left-wing Labor Party in the mid-1990s.

    Comparisons are often made between the two men.

    Like Blair, the reforming Renzi aims to draw the PD into the center ground, and even to reach out to voters who are usually more at home on the right.

    Renzi makes a virtue of the fact that he is fresh to the political scene, but that leaves him open to the charge that he is desperately inexperienced.

    Running the beautiful Renaissance city of Florence is a far cry from eventually trying to manage Italy, a correspondent says.

    Renzi’s many supporters there would praise him for overseeing a substantial pedestrianization plan, and working to promote Florence.

    But the mayor also has his critics among the Florentines.

    Among them is Ornella De Zordo, an opposition councilor who argues that the slick Renzi is much better at making promises than keeping them.

    “He’s used the slogan ‘Said, Done!’ many times,” she said. “I would say ‘Said, But Not Done!’ because Renzi is very good at a communicational level — at making announcements.

    “But when you look at his record, things are very different. He sells himself very well.”

    Renzi was born in Florence in 1975, later graduating in law from the University of Florence. He joined the Italian People’s Party in 1996. He was elected as president of the province of Florence in 2004.

    After five years as president, Renzi announced that he would attempt to become the mayor of Florence. On June 9, 2009, Renzi won the mayoral election.

    In September 2012, he announced that he would seek to become the secretary of DP, with a view to leading the center-left coalition in the 2013 general election. He lost the December election, finishing second with 39 percent of the vote.

    Renzi is married to a teacher, Agnese Landini, with whom he has two sons and a daughter.(SD-Agencies)