Italian premier to resign in bid for coalition

ROME — Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte intends to offer his resignation today, his office said Monday, a move seen as a gamble that the leader will get a fresh mandate from the president to try to forge a more viable coalition.

Conte survived two confidence votes in Parliament last week but crucially lost his absolute majority in the Senate with the defection of a centrist ally, former Premier Matteo Renzi. The loss of his majority hobbled his government’s effectiveness in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic, which has devastated Italy’s long-stagnant economy.

Conte’s office said Monday night that the premier will inform his Cabinet at a meeting this morning of his “will to go to the Quirinale (presidential palace) to hand in his resignation.”

Then Conte intends to head to the palace to meet with President Sergio Mattarella, who as head of state can accept the resignation, possibly asking the premier to then see if he can assemble a more solid coalition that can command a dependable majority in Parliament.

Mattarella has frequently stressed the need for the nation to have solid leadership as it struggles with the pandemic.

After consultations with leaders of both government and opposition parties, the president could also decide to tap someone else deemed to have better chances of forming a more solid government. If no one can forge a more viable, dependable coalition, Mattarella has the option of dissolving Parliament, setting the stage for an election two years early.

Conte has led a long-bickering center-left coalition for 16 months. Before that, for 15 months he headed a government still with the populist 5-Star Movement, Parliament’s largest party, but in coalition with the right-wing League party of Matteo Salvini.

That first government collapsed when Salvini yanked his support in a failed bid to win the premiership for himself.

Conte, while identified with the 5-Star Movement, doesn’t head any party. So, in a departure from Italy’s frequent political crisis, he won’t be part of the formal consultations with Mattarella, who meets with party leaders coming to the palace in rapid succession for talks.

Key support for whatever government might come next could come from the centrist opposition party of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi. Just hours before the announcement by Conte’s office, the media mogul said he was trusting the “political wisdom” of Mattarella to indicate the way out of the crisis.

“The high road is one only,” Berlusconi said in a statement. That solution would be a “new government that would represent substantial unity of the country in a moment of emergency,” or it could be a new election “to give back the (deciding) word to the Italian” voters.

By the end of February, the Italian government must inform the European Union how it intends to spend some $250 billion in recovery funds, focused on reforming the country’s health and other institutional systems.

One of Renzi’s issues with Conte was what he contended was too much decision-making power on the funding programs concentrated in the premier’s hands.