AS IF Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, did not have enough to worry about, on April 2nd an exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, declared that the head of state had “the Devil behind him”. His comment reinforced Mr Napolitano’s claim a day earlier that the end of his seven-year presidency had become “surreal”. He is facing the veto of a political group that wants to play by entirely new rules: Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S), which took almost a quarter of the vote in February’s election and holds the balance in the upper-house Senate, which any Italian government has to control.

Widely seen outside Italy as an anti-austerity protest movement, the M5S is more nuanced. It has gained from resentment at the sacrifices the euro crisis is forcing on Italians; and Mr Grillo has proposed restructuring Italy’s €2 trillion ($2.6 trillion) public debt. But otherwise the M5S favours austerity of a kind, preaching an anti-growth doctrine. Mr Grillo says that with M5S Italians would be happier but poorer. The M5S’s main aims are political. It wants to replace Italy’s political parties with web-based, semi-direct democracy. Its lawmakers are bound not to “associate with other parties, coalitions or groups other than for votes on common points”.

Since neither the centre-left led by Pier Luigi Bersani nor the main conservative block led by Silvio Berlusconi can form a majority with any other group in the Senate, only two possible governments remain: a left-right coalition, which Mr Bersani rejects, or a technocratic government supported by both sides, which Mr Berlusconi rejects. This makes an early election likely. But a frustrated Mr Napolitano is trying another idea. On March 30th he set up two working groups to look for a limited programme that both alliances could endorse. The ploy bought time, reassuring markets that he had not despaired of finding a government and helping to bridge the gap until April 18th, when a special assembly will start the process of electing a new president to succeed him.

That should be easy. The centre-left is just a few votes short of a majority in the assembly, which will comprise the members of both houses of parliament plus representatives from the regions. Thanks to an electoral law giving bonus seats to the alliance with most votes, the centre-left has a big majority in the lower-house Chamber of Deputies. And because it controls most regions, it can also count on most of their representatives. With help from just a handful of others, Mr Bersani should thus be able to impose his choice as president after the third ballot, when a two-thirds majority is no longer required.

But since the centre-left already has the second- and third-ranking state posts (the speakerships of the two chambers), Mr Berlusconi is insisting that the right should have the presidency. The imposition of a third centre-left candidate would close the door on any possible accommodation. Mr Bersani has agreed to further talks with Mr Berlusconi to see if they can find a mutually acceptable candidate.

As for Mr Grillo’s followers, they will make their choice in a different way: in an online ballot. As Professor James Walston of the American University of Rome wrote in a blog, “this is a revolution.” A non-violent one so far, and perhaps one that will fizzle. But a revolution all the same.