Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has had to leave the NATO summit in Madrid early due to an internal crisis that his government coalition is experiencingafter the leader of the 5 Star Movement (M5S), Giussepe Conte, accused the Italian president of “asking for his head”.
After having dinner at the Prado Museum in Madrid with the rest of the leaders of the NATO Member States, Draghi has announced that he was returning to Rome early to chair this Thursday a Council of Ministers in Rome in which it is expected to approve measures to alleviate the high cost of electricity bills and other measures against inflation.
However, on Wednesday afternoon, the leader of the 5-Star Movement -a party that belongs to the government coalition led by Draghi-, and also former Prime Minister of Italy, Giussepe Conte, has accused the Italian ‘premier’ of asking the founder of the party, the comedian Beppe Grillo, to get Conte out of the M5S.
“Grillo told me that Mario Draghi asked to remove Giuseppe Conte from the M5S because it was inappropriate”, assured the sociologist Domenico De Masi in an interview with the newspaper ‘Il Fatto Quotidiano’ and that Conte then used to attack Draghi. The Palazzo Chigi (the Italian presidential office) denied the statement a few hours later .
Following De Masi’s statement, the M5S leader held a meeting with the Italian president, Sergio Matarella, in which has expressed “the seriousness of the situation”although he has not announced an exit of his party from the Executive.
“It seems to me sincerely serious that a technical prime minister, who has been invested by us, interferes in the life of the political forces that support him for other things“, Conte underlined, in statements collected by ‘Corriere della Sera’.
For his part, Draghi responded to journalists during the NATO summit by dampening the controversy: “I spoke with Conte a while ago. I called you this morning, then he called me and we started to clarify ourselves. We will talk again tomorrow to see each other as soon as possible (…) the government is not at risk.”
Source: Lasexta
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
