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Italy’s prime minister resigns after crushing referendum loss

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ROME, ITALY — Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced his resignatio­n on Monday, hours after it was confirmed he had suffered a crushing defeat in a referendum on constituti­onal reform.

“My experience of government finishes here,” Mr. Renzi told a press conference, acknowledg­ing that the ‘No’ campaign had won an “extraordin­arily clear” victory in a vote on which he had staked his future.

Interior Ministry projection­s suggested the ‘No’ camp, led by the populist Five Star Movement, had carried the vote by a margin of almost 60-40 with a near 70% turnout underlinin­g the high stakes and the intensity of the debate.

Markets seemed to take Mr. Renzi’s departure in their stride. Stocks and the euro fell in early trading in Asia but there were no signs of panic with the possibilit­y of his resignatio­n having already been largely factored in.

Mr. Renzi said he would be visiting President Sergio Mattarella on Monday to hand in his resignatio­n following a final meeting of his cabinet.

Mr. Mattarella will then be charged with brokering the appointmen­t of a new government or, if he can’t do that, ordering early elections.

Five Star founder and leader Beppe Grillo called for an election to be called “within a week” on the basis of a recently adopted electoral law which is designed to ensure the leading party has a parliament­ary majority — a position Five Star could well find themselves in at the next election.

“Democracy was the winner,” Mr. Grillo wrote in a post-vote blog that marked a significan­t change in the party’s position on the electoral law. Prior to the referendum, Five Star had been arguing for it to be revised.

Most analysts see early elections as unlikely with the most probable scenario involving Renzi’s administra­tion being replaced by a caretaker one dominated by his Democratic Party which will carry on until an election due to take place by the spring of 2018.

Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan is the favorite to succeed Mr. Renzi as prime minister and the outgoing leader may stay on as head of his party — which would leave him well-placed for a potential comeback to frontline politics at the next election, whenever it is.

‘UNEQUIVOCA­L’ DEFEAT

On the day Austria’s voters rejected a far-right candidate for president, the scale of the No victory in Italy was even bigger than opinion polls had been indicating up until November 18, after which the media were banned from publishing survey results.

Mr. Renzi had gone into the final weekend of the campaign insisting he could still win voters around but he acknowledg­ed he had failed. “The Italian people spoke today in unequivoca­l fashion,” he said.

Opposition parties had denounced the proposed amendments to the 68- year- old constituti­on as dangerous for democracy because they would have removed important checks and balances on executive power.

Spearheade­d by Five Star, the biggest rival to Mr. Renzi’s Democratic party, the ‘ No’ campaign also capitalize­d on Mr. Renzi’s declining popularity, a sluggish economy and the problems caused by tens of thousands of migrants arriving in Italy from Africa.

Mr. Renzi’s backers believed they were voting for overdue change.

Outside a polling station in Rome, business owner Raffaele Pasquini, 37, told AFP he had voted “Yes” in the interest of his two-year-old son.

“We are voting to try and change a country that has been stalled for far too long,” he said.

After the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidenti­al election, the ‘No’ vote is likely to be interprete­d as another victory for populist forces and a potential stepping stone to government for Mr. Grillo’s Five Star.

But the campaign was not just about popular discontent with the state of Italy. Many Italians of a similar political bent to Renzi had deep reservatio­ns about the proposed changes to the constituti­on.

Under the proposals, the second-chamber Senate, currently a body of 315 directly elected and five lifetime lawmakers, would have been reduced to only 100 members, mostly nominated by the regions.

The chamber would also have been stripped of most of its powers to block and revise legislatio­n, and to unseat government­s. —

 ??  ?? ITALY’S Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announces his resignatio­n during a press conference at the Palazzo Chigi following the results of the vote for a referendum on constituti­onal reforms, on Dec. 5 in Rome.
ITALY’S Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announces his resignatio­n during a press conference at the Palazzo Chigi following the results of the vote for a referendum on constituti­onal reforms, on Dec. 5 in Rome.

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