Italy PM Conte to resign in high-stakes gamble to bounce back with new coalition

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte

Credit: LUDOVIC MARIN /AFP

Italy’s prime minister will resign on Tuesday, plunging the country into fresh political turmoil at a time when it is witnessing hundreds of virus deaths a day and enduring the worst recession since the Second World War.

Giuseppe Conte’s move is being seen as a calculated gamble – he hopes to bounce back within days with a reshuffled cabinet and a more solid majority.

The prime minister survived a confidence vote in parliament last week but emerged weakened, after losing the support of a small centrist party led by Matteo Renzi, one of his predecessors as prime minister.

Mr Renzi accused the government of bungling the handling of the pandemic and failing to come up with a credible plan for economic recovery.

His decision to pull the plug meant that the governing coalition no longer has an assured majority in the Senate, the upper house of parliament.

Mr Conte’s office confirmed on Monday night that he will call a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning in which he will announce his intention to tender his resignation to Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella.

He will hope to be given a mandate to form a new government. By resigning, the prime minister aims to buy more time to convince unaligned MPs to join the coalition.

He may try to form some sort of national unity government to deal with the pandemic, the dire economic crisis it has caused and the debate over how to spend more than €200 billion in recovery funds promised by the EU.

That might include extending an olive branch of reconciliation with Mr Renzi, the man who precipitated the crisis. His party is small but its numbers in the Senate are crucial to the coalition.

The most likely outcome of the turmoil is a new centrist coalition led either by Mr Conte or a new prime minister, commentators said.

Former prime minister Matteo Renzi withdrew his support from the government last week

Credit: Barcroft

The political machinations in Rome have angered and bewildered many Italians at a time when hundreds of people are dying each day from Covid-19 and the country faces an acute shortfall in the number of vaccines it was promised, in common with most EU countries.

“The outcome of the vote left Conte in office but not in power as he failed to secure an absolute majority,” said Wolfgango Piccoli, from Teneo, a risk consultancy.

The two parties in the coalition – the centre-Left Democrats and the Five Star Movement – are desperate to avoid new elections because they fear they would be won by a hard Right coalition consisting of Matteo Salvini’s League party and a smaller party, Brothers of Italy, which is the heir to Italy’s fascist movement.

“If faced with no other alternative than early elections, both Five Star and the Democrats would quickly ditch Conte and look for another candidate (more of a ‘useful idiot’ rather than a credible technocrat) who has better chances of forming a new working majority and avoid the dreaded snap polls,” said Mr Piccoli.

Italians are used to political crises – the country has had 66 governments since the end of the war – but many are finding it hard to forgive politicians for indulging in such backroom power politics when more than 85,000 people have died from the pandemic.