Italian PM wins crucial vote in Senate with very thin margin
ROME – Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte squeaked through a crucial Senate confidence vote Tuesday night, allowing him to keep his wobbly coalition afloat but failing to secure the reliable support needed from lawmakers to help him effectively govern the country with its pandemic-pummeled economy.
The vote went 156 to 140 in his favor. There were 16 abstentions, thanks to a small but key coalition ally that bolted the center-left coalition last week, jeopardizing Conte’s survival at the nation’s helm. Two of the yes votes came from the center-right opposition party led by ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
An absolute majority in the Senate is 161, so to pass critical legislation, including aid to help Italy’s battered economy, Conte faces the unpleasant prospect of having to rely on lawmakers outside his coalition.
Conte tweeted that “now the aim is to make this majority more solid. Italy doesn’t have a minute to lose. Right to work to overcome the health emergency and the economic crisis.”
Had he lost, Conte would have been required to resign. He could till opt to hand in his resignation to Italian President Sergio Mattarella, in a bid to be tapped anew to try to cobble together a revamped, more solid coalition.
Conte’s tweet indicated, however, that he wanted to try to forge on, no matter how hobbled his coalition was left by the defection of lawmakers loyal to former Premier Matteo Renzi.
With the vote barely counted, right-wing opposition members started demanding Conte and his oft-bickering, shrunken coalition quit.
Among them was Giorgia Meloni, who heads the fast-rising far-right Brothers of Italy party.
“The numbers speak clearly,” she said, referring to Conte’s winning the confidence vote with the help of ballots from senators-for-life, who are outside party ranks, and the abstentions by Renzi loyalists.
“We’re waiting to learn if the president of the republic thinks that in these conditions Conte can go forward,’’ Meloni said.
In pitching for the Senate’s backing, Conte acknowledged his government’s survival was in its hands. “If we don’t have the (vote) numbers, this government goes home,” he said.
Italy is rolling out its COVID-19 vaccination program. It must also tell the European Union by next month how it plans to spend more than 200 billion euros (dollars) in funds earmarked by Brussels to help Italy’s health system, sorely tested by the pandemic, and revive an economy, which was stagnant for years before pandemic lockdowns caused many businesses to struggle to survive.
In the lower Chamber of Deputies, where the 16-month-old government holds a more comfortable margin, Conte won a first confidence vote on Monday.
Last week, Renzi yanked his two ministers from his small, centrist Italia Viva (Italy Alive) party, in a spat over how much control Conte would hold in deciding how the EU largesse gets spent.
Renzi has hammered away at what he depicted as Conte’s less-than-bold response to fighting the pandemic, including in how funds will be spent to revive Italy’s battered economy, already stagnant for years before COVID-19 struck.