Italian PM Mario Draghi resigned. It is the second time he's tried to resign this week, and now the president accepted.

Italian PM Mario Draghi has resigned, setting the country up for another election. It is the second time he's tried to resign this week, and now the Italian president has accepted his resignation. This is the second time that Draghi tried to resign, and this time, his resignation was accepted. Governmental stability is the norm in Italy, which has had 69 governments since WW2.

BARBIE NADEAU: “Well, it is complicated. Italian politics are always complicated. This country was supposed to go into elections in May of 2023. Draghi, who is a respectable face of the Italian government, a Eurocrat, former president of the European Central Bank, was put in place in February 2021 when the last government fell. The reason it fell this time, the reason he lost his support, is because of an eye to the upcoming elections.

“Now, the centre-right coalition which is led by familiar names like Silvio Berlusconi, Mateo Salvini and a relative newcomer Giorgio Malloni are polling well, and so they want an elections to be, a snap elections to be called. They want the voters to go to the ballot box right now.

“Put against that the backdrop of instability in the country, the pandemic, the war in Europe, the five-star movement – the anti-establishment five-star movement that won the highest number of votes in the last election in 2018 – has imploded from the inside.

“So really, there's no choice but to go to the ballot box and let the Italians try to figure out who they want to take this forward. Mario Draghi has had enough, he says.”