ROME: Italy’s main opposition parties yesterday called for the resignation of the deputy head of the fragile ruling coalition over the expulsion of the wife and daughter of dissident Kazakh oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov.
Both the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the smaller Left Ecology Freedom party filed a motion of no confidence in Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, who also serves as deputy premier, rejecting the government’s claim that the deportation took place without the knowledge of ministers.
The incident, in which Ablyazov’s wife Anna Shalabayeva and their six year-old daughter Alua were deported after a midnight raid on their house in the suburbs of Rome on May 29, has compounded the headaches of Prime Minister Enrico Letta.
He was already struggling to contain coalition tensions between Alfano’s centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) and his own centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and now faces a potentially damaging showdown in parliament, even though Alfano’s opponents may not have enough votes to oust him. Reuters
