Italy: Conte wins the confidence of the Senate and exceeds …

From Rome

The Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte won the second battle in Parliament, securing the Senate vote of confidence on Tuesday evening, after winning the confidence of the Chamber of Deputies on Monday.. With these two positive results, the center-left government, led mainly by the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the Democratic Party (PD) and chaired by Conte, will be able to move forward in its work of rebuilding the economy. and Italian society. , severely damaged by the pandemic, as they themselves have recognized.

The parliamentary confidence vote was needed after the government entered into crisis last week because one of the coalition parties, Italia Viva (Iv) of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, has decided to withdraw from the government coalitionl, kidnapping his two ministers and an undersecretary, and accusing Conte and his people of not accepting a measure they urged.

The result of the vote in the Senate was 156 votes in favor of the government and 140 votes against, in addition to 16 abstentions, out of a total of 315 senators. Among those who voted in favor of the government was the Italian-Argentinian Ricardo Merlo, from the Association Movement of Italians Abroad. But also some senators who have changed their traditional position such as Pier Ferdinando Casini, former Christian Democrat and currently leader of the Centristas por Europa, former Prime Minister Mario Monti of the Scelta Civica party and two senators of Forza Italia, the party of Silvio Berlusconi, who immediately surrendered expelled from the party.

Renzi and his people, after a long Senate meeting, decided to abstain from the vote despite the fact that Renzi harshly attacked Conte during the debate.. Is that voting against confidence would have been the same as giving your votes to the right that he wants to overthrow the government so that an election can be called immediately.

Conte appeared before the Senate on Tuesday morning, making more or less the same arguments he made in his Monday speech to the Chamber of Deputies. “We need to rethink our development model,” he said, speaking about what needs to be done to deal with the problems generated by the pandemic. Among the many effects of the pandemic, he added, “awareness of the value of dialogue has increased”, not only in politics but also with technicians and science, in order to take measures ” most just “. But the pandemic has also increased “a sense of responsibility and unity”, both in society and in government. “Nothing will be the same when the pandemic ends,” he stressed.

And on Renzi, he stressed: “There is no plausible basis” for his retirement from government, but we have to move forward, “we have to change the page”.

Renzi, who is a senator and was present, did not miss an opportunity to attack him during the debate. “We think his government is neither the prettiest nor the best in the world,” Renzi said. “You changed three different government alliances to stay in your place”, added the leader of Italia Viva, apparently, according to some journalistic reports, a little angry because he is not sure that his maneuver to trigger a government crisis is going to take advantage of it when everyone expects peace and no arguments between politicians in a time of crisis like this one where the coronavirus reigns.

Matteo Salvini, the right-wing La Liga leader, for his part gave a very aggressive speech in the Senate, attacking Conte throughout his career. But he didn’t remember that in the first Conte government born in 2018, he and his party were part of the government alliance and that he at one point resigned, causing the crisis (as Renzi was doing now) in order to cause the fall. de Conte and go to new elections, since the right was sure it would win and thus obtain the government. But he never went to the elections because the prime minister has new allies to move forward.

After this vote, which joins the confidence approved Monday by the Chamber of Deputies, Conte must appear before the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella to refine the details, in particular concerning the new cabinet of ministers.

Dissatisfied with the results as they push to go to the elections, the leaders of the right-wing parties, Matteo Salvini of the League and Georgia Meloni of Fratelli d’Italia, said they would request an audience to speak with President Mattarella and raise your voices. doubts about the stability of the Conte government.