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Cowen resigns as party leader, remains Irish PM

22 January 2011 20:14 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Ireland’s Prime Minister Brian Cowen has resigned as leader of the ruling Fianna Fail party but said on Saturday he would remain as premier until a parliamentary election on March 11, APA reports quoting Reuters.
Cowen’s decision to split the role of party leader and prime minister is highly unusual and crowns a week of high drama in which a botched attempt to reshuffle his cabinet nearly brought down the government and forced him to call an early election.
"We will manage the situation and people need to be assured of that. The government will discharge its duties properly and appropriately. It doesn’t in any way affect government business," Cowen told a hastily arranged news conference in a plush Dublin hotel.
Cowen said he expected the government to defeat a motion of no confidence tabled by the opposition Labour party.
"The parliamentary majority in the house will be tested of course by a confidence motion on Wednesday evening. I believe that we will win that vote," he said.
Fianna Fail’s leadership contest will be held next week and Cowen said he would give the victor his full support.
Former foreign minister Micheal Martin, who resigned this week after failing to unseat Cowen when the party held a secret ballot on his leadership, is the favourite to replace him.
Cowen and his party are set for a record rout in the March 11 poll amid widespread anger over their handling of a financial crisis that forced Dublin to seek a humiliating EU/IMF bailout and transformed the country from economic star to euro zone basket case.
Opinion polls suggest a coalition of the centre-right Fine Gael party and the centre-left Labour party will form the next coalition government.