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Italy's Renzi readies for power but faces daunting task

15 February 2014 01:05 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Matteo Renzi is one step from becoming Italy's youngest-ever prime minister after swiftly dispatching Enrico Letta in a party coup, but the manner of his political triumph could make it harder to carry out the bold reforms needed to resurrect the economy, APA reports quoting Reuters.

After Renzi and the rest of the center-left Democratic Party (PD) leadership forced Letta to quit by withdrawing their support at a special meeting on Thursday, the prime minister handed his resignation to President Giorgio Napolitano.

Napolitano will hold two days of consultations leading to the appointment of a successor. The 39-year-old Renzi, whose PD is the biggest party in parliament, could be named premier as soon as this weekend.

Renzi, who would be the third Italian prime minister in a row to be appointed without winning an election, faces intense pressure to achieve the structural reforms that have eluded Italy for years.

Though he has long been agitating for sweeping change in Italian politics and won a landslide victory for his party's leadership in December, few had expected him to snatch power from Letta so soon.

Renzi's decision to bring down the prime minister matured over the past fortnight, according to people close to him, after mounting pressure from unions and Italy's business lobby which have criticized the Letta government for not doing enough to help the country's struggling corporate landscape.

"The change came after a rather abnormal piece of pyrotechnics but I wouldn't waste too much time on the whys and hows of it all. The problem is this: can he help get the country moving again?" Carlo De Benedetti, one of Italy's most prominent businessmen, said at an event in Turin.

"If he can, the way the change happened will be forgotten. If he can't, that is all that will be remembered," he said.

Renzi has shown himself a decisive, even ruthless political tactician but the structural problems that have made Italy one of the world's slowest growing economies over the past two decades will be a tougher challenge than sidelining rivals.

Data from statistics office ISTAT on Friday showed a 0.1 percent rise in economic output in the final quarter of last year, the first increase since 2011.