Italian PM names new ministers, sets policy agenda
30 December, 2019
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte named two new ministers on Saturday to replace his education minister who recently resigned and outlined an ambitious agenda for next year including reform of the justice system and state bureaucracy.
In a three-hour year-end news conference, Conte accused right-wing opposition leader Matteo Salvini of “insidious” political behavior and appealed for unity from the fractious coalition backing his own government.
“Politics doesn’t need conflicts. Polemics and marking out our differences don’t help us,” Conte said in reference to the frequent bickering between the 5-Star Movement, the center-left Democratic Party (PD) and smaller centrist and leftist parties.
Filling the gap left after Education Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti from the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement quit on Wednesday complaining of insufficient funding, Conte said he was dividing the ministry into two.
He named Lucia Azzolina, also from 5-Star and previously Fioramonti’s junior minister, as the new minister for schools, and named a non-party technocrat Gaetano Manfredi, the rector of Naples University, as minister for universities and research.
Three 5-Star senators quit this month to join Salvini’s League party and some politicians say other lawmakers from the increasingly divided movement are ready to join a new parliamentary group led by Fioramonti but loyal to Conte.
The prime minister said if any such moves were afoot he disapproved of them and had nothing to do with them.
“I don’t want parliamentarians using my name to form a new group that would only make the government less stable,” he said.
Source: the-japan-news.com
TAG(s):