Italy was mired in a new political quagmire yesterday after former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi pushed his party’s ministers to quit the fragile coalition government, a move Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta called a “crazy act.”
All five ministers from the People of Freedom (PDL) party on Saturday took the decision to step down at Berlusconi’s urging, said Italian Deputy Prime Minister Angelino Alfano, who was among the resignations.
Italian newspapers put the blame for the new government crisis squarely at Berlusconi’s feet.
“The convict has made Italy fail,” read the headline in the leftist daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, alluding to Berlusconi’s conviction for tax fraud.
The center-right La Stampa and business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore decried “the madness” of the actions taken by the media mogul who has dominated Italian politics for most of the last two decades.
The flamboyant billionaire dismissed as “unacceptable” a demand by Letta on Friday for parliament to express support for the government this week, in a bid to end a crisis that has plagued the bickering ruling coalition.
Now Italian President Giorgio Napolitano will have to mediate to find a way out of the latest political impasse. He was expected to meet Letta yesterday.
Letta’s government was cobbled together following a two-month stand-off after an inconclusive general election in February. The premier of the center-left Democratic Party (PD) had won the confidence of financial markets by keeping the improbable right-left coalition together.
Italian media yesterday speculated that if the crisis deepens there could be a reversal in market confidence, making it harder for Italy to deal with its economic difficulties and enact reforms.
The revolt among Berlusconi’s backers boiled over on Thursday when they first threatened to resign over his legal problems.
A Senate committee was preparing to vote on whether to eject Berlusconi from the chamber after he was sentenced to a year in prison for tax fraud, a ruling that was upheld by Italy’s top court last month.
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The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
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‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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