Rome – Like the Coronavirus pandemic the death toll is skyrocketing worldwide, the latest victim being the Italian government. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte resigned and sparked a political crisis as the country is deeply affected by its COVID-19 epidemic.
Conte’s center-left coalition government began to falter last week when former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi garnered the support of his split party, denying Conte an absolute majority in government. Renzi had punished Conte for his treatment of the health crisis and economic recovery plan.
Last spring, Italy was the epicenter of the global pandemic and became the first country to impose a national blockade to try to contain the virus, despite the crippling blow it caused to the economy.
The effort seemed successful, as the contagion and mortality rate decreased significantly during the summer. But last fall, after the government eased blockade restrictions, cases and mortality began to rise and the the second wave turned out even worse than the first.
Currently, the death toll is more than 85,000 people. In a country of 60 million, this makes it the fifth highest COVID-19 per capita mortality rate 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 nations. It is the main beneficiary of a European Union investment plan for the economic recovery of the coronavirus, with Rome receiving around $ 243 billion in EU funding.
Prime Minister Conte fought with the party of Renzi, his small coalition ally, to spend EU recovery funds, and Renzi withdrew from the coalition.
Massimo Di Vita / Arxiu Massimo Di Vita / Mondadori Portfolio / Getty
But despite the alleged shortcomings of Conte’s government, polls show that Italians still largely approve of his leadership and reject the upset of the apparatus at such a critical time in the country’s history, when hundreds of Italians die. on a daily basis, companies face bankruptcy and vaccines take longer. than expected.
Conte may not have left for good. He is expected to try to bring together a new broader coalition of lawmakers to fill the void left by Renzi’s party.
For a political newcomer, Conte has shown strange 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 League party.
In 2019, the League withdrew and tried to force elections. But Conte negotiated a new alliance, incorporating Renzi’s center-left Democratic Party.
Notoriously unstable, Italy has had 66 different governments since World War II.