ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti announced yesterday that he would resign once next year’s budget is approved, two days after Silvio Berlusconi’s party withdrew its parliamentary support for his technocrat government.
Only hours before the announcement, Berlusconi, who has stepped up attacks on Monti over recent weeks, said he would run to become premier for a fifth time on a platform that attacks the former European Commissioner’s stewardship of the economy.
Parliament is already poised to pass the budget by Christmas, and so Monti’s resignation probably brings the expected vote forward by no more than a month to February. Elections must follow no more than 70 days after President Giorgio Napolitano dissolves parliament.
Monti’s move turns the tables on Berlusconi, who seemed to have once again seized a political opportunity to keep his party in the political game just a year after being forced to resign amid a sex scandal and a debt crisis.
It will also increase speculation that he could be eyeing a run as a candidate in the election himself.
At a conference in France earlier, Monti, widely credited with restoring Italy’s international credibility after the scandal-plagued Berlusconi era, appeared to take aim at Berlusconi, warning against “populism.”
He said Italy should not go back to where it was when he took over for Berlusconi a year ago.
Following a two-hour meeting with Napolitano, he warned that not approving the budget “would render more serious the government crisis, also at a European level,” and said that after it is approved, his resignation would be “irrevocable.”
Leaders of both Berlusconi’s centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), which is leading in the opinion polls, said they were willing to accelerate the passage of the budget.
“Faced with the irresponsibility of the right that betrayed a commitment it made a year ago before the whole country… Monti responded with an act of dignity that we profoundly respect,” said PD leader Pier Luigi Bersani.
“We are ready to approve the budget in the fastest possible manner,” he said in a statement.
