ROME — Italy’s president Sunday vetoed a euro-skeptic choice for economy minister, foiling a bid by populists to form Italy’s next government and increasing the prospects of a quick return to the polls, 12 weeks after national elections produced a political impasse.

The pair of rival populists who had agreed to forge a governing coalition together exploded in anger after President Sergio Mattarella announced at the Quirinal presidential palace that he was refusing to appoint a minister whose views could rattle already nervous markets and drive up Italy’s staggeringly high debt.

Luigi Di Maio, who was determined to see his anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, Parliament’s largest party, achieve government power for the first time, raised the specter of a move to impeach Mattarella, who, as head of state, must give his approval to any new government.

“If we go to vote (again) and we win, and then we go back to the Quirinale and they tell us we can’t go into a government, for this I say, we must put the president under accusation” in Parliament, Di Maio said in a phone call to a talk show.

Right-wing leader Matteo Salvini, who overcame rivalry with Di Maio to try to forge a coalition with him, told a rally of his League party supporters after learning his pick for economy minister was rejected: “If we’re not free to decide, better to go back to vote.” He added “we’re not a free country” but have “limited sovereignty.”

The political novice and 5-Star supporter selected by Di Maio and Salvini to be premier told reporters at the palace he had tried his best but didn’t succeed, four days after Mattarella formally gave him a mandate to try to form the government on behalf of the populists.

“Good luck to anyone” who next gets tapped by Mattarella to be premier-designate, Giuseppe Conte, a law professor at the University of Florence, told reporter. He said he tried to give the country “a government of change.”

Mattarella said he would reveal his next move “in a few hours.”

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