now italy is entering another period of
political turbulence after the
resignation of the prime minister
giuseppe conte
he hopes that italy's head of state
president sergio matarella
will ask him to try to form a new
stronger alternative government
well mr conte lost his majority in the
senate last week after italia viva
a small party led by the former prime
minister matteo renzi
left the fragile ruling coalition
joining me now from rome is our
correspondent
mark lowen um mark we've been
anticipating this resignation
we have gita because uh without a
majority
in the upper house of parliament which
is what happened last week when
when giuseppe conte lost it they it
would have been a torturous process to
get any legislation at all through
parliament there would have been horse
trading
and negotiations on any kind of
legislative step and and facing
another vote later on this week on
passing a piece of legislation
it was thought that giuseppe conte
decided to quit before he lost that vote
he has now gone to see the president
here in italy and as a quirk of italian
politics when a prime minister resigns
he might simply just return following
weeks of negotiations to try to
build a new strengthened coalition and
he will argue that
in the midst of a pandemic that has
killed more than 85 000 italians on
and on and unleashed the worst economic
crisis since the second world war
now is not the time to plunge italy into
fresh elections
however if he fails to get the
numbers needed to command a
parliamentary majority that task would
fall to other political leaders
and if all else fails then yes italy
would be facing fresh elections
and and who is he going to be reaching
out to and how will that change the sort
of focus
of the government given that the you
know there has been this criticism on
the whole handling of the pandemic
yeah he'll be reaching out to various
centrist members of the opposition
trying to peel them away
to focus minds to give them a kind of
sense of urgency now to
come together in in what he will call a
a government of national salvation
uh to try to lead italy through the very
difficult next few months and there's
another factor in all of this gita
which is that opinion polls suggest that
if elections were to be held
now then a right-wing coalition
would come into power and the biggest
party would be the
far-right league party led by the fire
firebrand
nationalist mateo salvini and so mr
conte will argue and
will hope that that potential threat
would
focus enough minds among centrist
politicians to kind of
rally behind him and decide to form a
new coalition led by him but
nothing is certain in this country of
course and uh italy's 66th government
since the second world war comes to a
close
uh but possibly uh italy's 29th prime
minister since the second world war
will simply return as italy's 29th prime
minister since the second world war
mark lowen in rome politics always
interesting there thanks so much