Silvio Berlusconi has resigned as prime minister of Italy, after dominating the country's politics for 17 years.
President Giorgio Napolitano accepted his offer and is likely to appoint technocrat Mario Monti his successor.
Mr Berlusconi lost his majority amid an acute debt crisis that threatens the eurozone. He promised to go once MPs had approved new austerity measures.
Crowds celebrated outside the presidential palace, shouting "buffoon" as he entered.
The BBC's Alan Johnston in Rome says Mr Berlusconi's last journey as prime minister was an undignified one.
Police struggled to control a large, hostile crowd which booed and jeered as his convoy swept by, and after his resignation he left by a side exit to avoid the protesters.
#3
Berlusconi was the best thing to happen to Italy since Giuseppe Mazzini. Managing to get dominance in a political system full of schism and infighting, and keeping it for 17 years, is about miraculous.
His biggest mistake was in not preparing his party and Italy for an orderly succession after he was gone.
ATHENS: Technocrat Prime Minister Lucas Papademos took office on Friday to save Greece from bankruptcy, heading a coalition cabinet filled with many of the same politicians who led the nation into crisis. But they'll turn it around this time, see...
At a colorful swearing-in ceremony, bearded Orthodox priests, led by the Archbishop of Athens, blessed Papademos, a former vice president of the European Central Bank, and a cabinet dominated by the two main parties which had bickered for four days before agreeing on the crisis coalition.
Apart from Papademos, who has no political experience, the main new face in the cabinet is a minister from the LAOS party the first time the far right has entered a Greek government since the country returned to democracy in 1974 following years of military rule.
The line-up includes socialist party power broker Evangelos Venizelos, who keeps the post as finance minister that he held in the outgoing government of George Papandreou, which imploded last week. Nothing points to a commitment of austerity like a socialist finance minister...
Analysts said Papademos would have to assert his authority over a cabinet packed with the conservative and socialist party politicians who alternated power for decades as Greece built up a huge debt that it could not manage, forcing a bailout.
Greece has a government that is the result of political compromise among three parties. It is obvious that there was a dealing of the cards, said Costas Panagopoulos, head of ALCO pollsters. It all now depends on how the prime minister handles them. A never-politician 'technocrat', now prime minister, against the wily rats who ran the country into the ground. I know how I'm betting... Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/12/2011 00:00 ||
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#2
This is somewhat funny. As far as the EU is concerned, they want Greece looted to pay back their loans from EU bankers, and screw the Greek people. So they have emplaced an EU insider to be the new PM. And they plan the same approach to Italy, and probably other nations as well, even Britain.
That is, they are willing to throw democracy out the window to preserve their own fortunes, appointing "special masters" to run countries in default. This is a subtle form of foreign tyranny, and those peoples should reject it, and these overlords.
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