Italian prime minister to resign after far-right’s call for no-confidence vote

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told the country’s parliament on Tuesday that he will present his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella in the wake of a rift in the country’s governing coalition.

Conte, a political outsider, was chosen prime minister to lead a coalition of the anti-establishment Cinque Stelle (Five Star) movement and the right-wing nationalist Lega (League), the winners of the 2018 parliamentary election.

{mosads}Serving as Conte’s deputy prime ministers are Luigi Di Maio of the Five Star movement and the League’s firebrand anti-immigration leader, Matteo Salvini, who this week launched a power grab against Conte.

“The government ends here. After the debate, I will hand my resignation to President Mattarella. Salvini has followed personal and party interests,” Conte said, according to Rome newspaper La Repubblica.

At the center of the power struggle are moves by Salvini to provoke a new election, as his populist tax policy proposals have engendered high poll numbers.

But the moves have pushed the Five Star movement into talks with the left-of-center Democratic Party, Bloomberg noted.

To form a coalition, Five Star and the Democratic Party would need Mattarella’s agreement that they could form a stable government, avoiding the elections that Salvini wants.