Charles ONIANS -
Dubbed “Mr Nobody” when he was first named Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte became increasingly assertive with the ruling coalition in its death throes before on Thursday being asked to form a new government.
He masterfully thwarted far-right deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini’s bid to bring the government down, resigning after 14 months of efforts to hold together a cabinet of far-right and anti-establishment ministers.
“We must transform this crisis into an opportunity,” Conte said on Thursday, promising a “more united, inclusive” country after a deal was struck which cuts the far-right out of power.
The discreet former academic, 55, last week lacerated Salvini in the Senate after he pulled the plug on the coalition with the Five Star Movement (M5S) on August 8.
Agreed to as a compromise candidate by Salvini and fellow deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio last year, Italians have become used to Conte’s soft-spoken declarations and the impossibility of his coming up with policies against the wishes of his deputies.
But Conte became more strident as the summer’s political crisis played out, with his dislike and distrust of Salvini becoming increasingly clear. He slammed Salvini’s “obsession” with immigration, noting that his government “has worked a lot and wasn’t at the beach,” a clear dig at the League party leader who has spent little time in his office, instead campaigning in his swimming trunks despite there being no election.
Shortly before Conte’s resignation announcement, Di Maio described him as “a rare pearl, a servant of the nation that Italy cannot lose”. Born in 1964 in the tiny village of Volturara Appula in the southern region of Puglia, Conte was a law lecturer at the University of Florence. A devout Catholic and former leftist turned M5S supporter, he also taught at Rome’s Luiss University. But his claims of study positions at some of the world’s most prestigious universities were cast into doubt, however.
He moved from academia to the corridors of power in June 2018 when he became premier. “I used to vote left. Today, I think that the ideologies of the 20th century are no longer adequate,” Conte once said. Di Maio, also from Italy’s poorer south, hailed him as “someone from the periphery of this country... who has made something of himself”. Conte is reportedly “very religious” and devoted to mystic Catholic saint Padre Pio, who lived in Puglia and was famous for exhibiting “stigmata” — body marks supposedly matching
the crucifixion wounds. — AFP
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