Italian Premier Enrico Letta meets the media following a Cabinet meeting in Rome, on Aug. 26, 2013.
Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta announced Thursday that he plans to resign after 10 months in office.
“I have informed the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano of my intention to go to the Quirinale (presidential) palace tomorrow to submit my resignation as prime minister,” Letta said in a statement, AFP reports.
The move comes hours after the council of his center-left Democratic Party overwhelmingly backed its chief, Florence Mayor Matteo Renzi, to replace Letta as head of the left-right coalition. Renzi would become Italy’s youngest-ever prime minister. He said the new government, which he would form, would have to figure out how to last until the end of its current legislature, in 2018, and to pass reforms to the constitution and electoral system.
Italy has had more than 60 governments since 1945, according to the Financial Times.
[AFP]