Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi was roundly defeated in a referendum to change Italy’s constitution.He conceded defeat and said he would submit his resignation to Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, on Monday afternoon.
“My experience in government ends here … I did all I could to bring this to victory. If you fight for an idea, you cannot lose,” Renzi said.
It was defeat with 59.1% of Italians voting against the proposed reforms, which would have made sweeping changes to Italy’s constitution and parliamentary system. Pointing to the high voter turnout – 65% of eligible voters cast ballots in the referendum – Renzi said the vote represented a “feast of democracy”.
The prime minister, who started his political career as the mayor of Florence and was the youngest-ever prime minister when he assumed office in 2014, made constitutional reform a central plank of his premiership and argued for months that the changes would make Italy more stable and likely to adopt tough-but-needed economic and labour policies, the Guardian reports.
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