Berlusconi has said that, by choosing a candidate he is unhappy with, Renzi has broken the terms of the so-called Nazareno Pact they struck last year for a new election law and a revamp of Italy‘s slow, costly political system. In Italy the president is a figurehead of national unity and the arbiter of Italian politics. Mattarella once resigned as minister rather than vote a broadcasting law that favored Berlusconi‘s Mediaset empire.