Rome – Like the corona pandemic The death toll is rising worldwide, the latest victim being the Italian government. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte resigned, sparking a political crisis as the country is deeply in the grip of the COVID-19 epidemic.
Conte’s center-left coalition government began to wobble last week when former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi withdrew the support of his splinter party and denied Conte an absolute government majority. Renzi had rebuked Conte for dealing with the health crisis and the plan for economic recovery.
Last spring, Italy was the epicenter of the global pandemic, becoming the first country to impose a national lockdown in an effort to contain the virus – despite the crippling blow that had taken the economy.
The attempt appeared successful as contamination and death rates slowed significantly over the summer. But last fall, after the government relaxed lockdown restrictions, the cases and death rates began to soar, and the second wave turned out to be even worse than the first.
The death toll is currently more than 85,000 people. In a country of 60 million people, it is the fifth highest COVID-19 death rate per capita in the world.
Given the early onset of the virus in Italy, the economy has been struggling with the effects of the pandemic for longer than most other countries. It is the largest beneficiary of a European Union investment plan for economic recovery from the coronavirus, with Rome to receive approximately $ 243 billion in EU funding.
Prime Minister Conte fought with Renzi’s party, his smaller coalition ally, over how to spend the EU restoration money, and Renzi withdrew from the coalition.
Massimo Di Vita / Massimo Di Vita Archive / Mondadori Portfolio / Getty
But despite alleged shortcomings of Conte’s government, polls show Italians still largely approve of his leadership and disapprove of disrupting the apple cart at such a critical time in the country’s history, when hundreds of Italians die every day, companies go bankrupt and vaccinations take longer. than expected.
Conte may not have disappeared for good. He is expected to try to bring together a new, wider coalition of lawmakers to close the gap left by Renzi’s party.
For a political newcomer, Conte has shown creepy survival skills. Few Italians had heard of the obscure law professor when he was appointed in 2018 to lead a coalition between Italy’s two largest populist parties, the 5-star movement and the anti-migrant party.
In 2019, the League withdrew its support and tried to force elections. But Conte brokered a new alliance, bringing Renzi’s center-left Democratic Party on board.
Notoriously unstable, Italy has had 66 different governments since World War II.