Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte resigned today after his coalition partners withdrawn their support for coronavirus management. An official statement made late Munday by Giuseppe Conte’s office said the chief would go today to the presidential palace to officially retire after a meeting with President Sergio Mattarella. Last week, after former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi retired the governing coalition from the centralist party, Italia Viva, Conte’s leadership stalled by a narrow majority in spite of the fact that he survived a big vote of trust in the Senate.
He called a cabinet meeting for 9:00am (0800 GMT) when he “will inform the ministers of his desire to go to the Quirinale (President Sergio Mattarella’s office) to resign”, his office said.
Last week, Conte won the parliament’s trust votes, but he did not have an absolute majority in the Senate, prompting him to resign.
He said to AP that the former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi “trusted the political wisdom” Mattarela” a few hours before Conte’s office had declared his resignation, adding that the highway is the only direction. “The alternative would be to give the Italian electorate the (deciding) term, a new cabinet expressing the considerable stability of the country in an emergency” or a new referendum,” AP quoted Berlusconi.
The nationalist Five Star Movement (M5S) declared just before the announcement that the main faction in parliament was going to stand up to the Conte.
“We remain at Conte’s side,” said Davide Crippa and Ettore Licheri, leaders of the party’s two legislative houses.