Boat loving Italian MP resigns after absences row

ROME: An Italian sailing champion turned MP – who justified frequent parliamentary absences by saying he could do politics from his boat – announced his resignation, blaming a ‘media lynching’.

In a letter to the president of the lower house, Andrea Mura said he had always taken his parliamentary mandate ‘with the greatest seriousness’ but that he had been unfairly rounded on by the media with ‘ignominious and groundless accusations’ which his Five Star Movement (M5S) had not given him the opportunity to explain.

Since his election in March, Mura had turned up for only eight of the assembly’s 220 votes, monitoring website OpenPolis revealed earlier.

The 2010 ‘Italian Sailor of the Year’, however, breezily rejected the criticism last week, telling Sardinia’s La Nuova Sardegna newspaper: “Political activity is not only conducted in parliament. You can also do it on a boat.” — AFP