{"id":228449,"date":"2019-08-27T21:32:53","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T01:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=228449"},"modified":"2019-08-27T21:32:53","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T01:32:53","slug":"trump-weighs-in-as-italians-toil-to-form-a-new-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/08\/27\/trump-weighs-in-as-italians-toil-to-form-a-new-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump weighs in as Italians toil to form a new government"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Starting to look good for the highly respected Prime Minister of the Italian Republic, Giuseppe Conte. Represented Italy powerfully at the G-7. Loves his Country greatly &amp; works well with the USA. A very talented man who will hopefully remain Prime Minister!<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/1166358721875894272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 27, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>ROME \u2014 While Italians don&#8217;t know if they&#8217;ll soon have a new government, let alone who might lead it, U.S. President Donald Trump cast his vote Tuesday for caretaker Premier Giuseppe Conte.<\/p>\n<p>A day after the two finished attending the G-7 summit in France, Trump tweeted that he hoped Conte would \u201cremain\u201d as premier because he is a \u201ctalented\u201d leader who works well with the United States.<\/p>\n<p>The tweet triggered a cascade of comments by Italians amused that Trump initially had misspelled Conte&#8217;s first name as \u201cGiuseppi,\u201d before it was corrected in a subsequent tweet.<\/p>\n<p>Conte quit as premier on Aug. 20 after nationalist leader Matteo Salvini yanked his right-wing League party&#8217;s support from the populist coalition that has been governing the country with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement since June 2018.<\/p>\n<p>Since the collapse, the opposition Democrats and the 5-Star Movement have been scrambling to see if they could overcome ideological differences and co-exist in a viable coalition.<\/p>\n<p>Negotiations appeared likely to drag on right up till late Wednesday afternoon. That&#8217;s when both parties must report on their progress to President Sergio Mattarella.<\/p>\n<p>If he&#8217;s not convinced a new coalition \u2014 again headed by Conte or by someone else \u2014 can command a dependable majority in Parliament, he&#8217;ll send the legislature packing and set elections for this fall.<\/p>\n<p>The centre-left Democrats are staunch backers of the European Union and promote infrastructure projects aimed at helping revive Italy&#8217;s stagnant economy. The Movement is euro-skeptic, suspicious of big business and opposes, on environmental grounds, completion of a high-speed rail project involving France and Italy that even Conte has said must continue.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the opposite forces are attracting out of a determination to keep Salvini and his nationalist League party out of power.<\/p>\n<p>Salvini has soared in popularity due to his anti-migrant stance while serving as hard-line interior minister in Conte&#8217;s just-collapsed coalition. He&#8217;s pressing for elections for Parliament 3 1\/2 years ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n<p>But opinion polls show Conte is also very popular in the country.<\/p>\n<p>A lawyer specializing in mediation, Conte is officially non-partisan. But he was strongly backed in the coalition by the Movement, which considers itself an expression of a grass-roots democracy where citizens express their will on the internet.<\/p>\n<p>Marathon negotiations, which lasted into early Tuesday, failed to yield agreement on who&#8217;d be premier and what a new coalition could achieve.<\/p>\n<p>Whoever governs will have to make billions of euros worth of spending cuts to avoid triggering sales tax hikes and other painful measures for the country next year.<\/p>\n<p>Both sides have been publicly vague. \u201cWe worked in a good atmosphere, tomorrow we&#8217;ll continue,\u201d a top 5-Star lawmaker, Stefano Patuanelli told reporters after Movement and Democratic Party delegations met for several hours on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Emma Bonino, who heads a tiny pro-EU party, expressed frustration there were no details on what new government might be taking shape.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wouldn&#8217;t buy a dress on sale in a box I couldn&#8217;t open, let alone support a government\u201d without knowing what it will do for the country, Bonino said after giving Mattarella her assessment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starting to look good for the highly respected Prime Minister of the Italian Republic, Giuseppe Conte. Represented Italy powerfully at &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":228172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-frances-demilio","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228451,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228449\/revisions\/228451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}