ROME 17 Sep (ANA) - The former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi has announced he is leaving the centre-left Democratic party (PD) to form his own party, potentially destabilising the days-old ruling coalition.

 

“I have decided to leave the PD and to build together with others a new house to do politics differently,” Renzi wrote on Facebook, barely a week after the PD’s unlikely coalition with the Five Star Movement (M5S) won a confidence motion in parliament.

 

Renzi is not himself part of the new government, which was formed to thwart the far-right leader and now ex-interior minister Matteo Salvini’s attempt to call snap elections he thought would make him premier.

 

But Renzi, who was hailed as a reformer when he became Italy’s youngest prime minister at the age of 39 in 2014, was a divisive figure within the PD, particularly for the left, which is largely loyal to the party leader, Nicolas Zingaretti.

 

“After seven years of friendly fire I think we must take note that our values, our ideas, our dreams, cannot every day be the object of internal quarrels,” Renzi wrote.

 

He resigned as prime minister in 2016 and fraught relations within the PD prompted repeated speculation that he would leave to form his own, more centrist, party.

 

“The victory we got in parliament against populism and Salvini was important to save Italy, but it’s not enough,” Renzi wrote.

 

Italian media reported that about 30 lawmakers might declare their loyalty to Renzi, but that he said he would continue to support the government of the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte.(ANA)

FA/ANA/17 September 2019------