WORLD
CHINA DAILY Thursday, August 22, 2019 | 11Italy in limbo
after Conte
resigns as PM
Political crisis has raised concerns
about eurozone’s third-largest economy
ROME — Italian Prime Minister
Giuseppe Conte resigned on Tues-
day after lashing out at far-right
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini for
pursuing his own interests by pull-
ing the plug on the government
coalition.
The move left the eurozone’s
third-largest economy in a political
vacuum until Italian President Ser-
gio Mattarella decides whether to
form a new coalition or call an elec-
tion after talks with other parties in
the coming days.
Mattarella charged Conte with
heading a caretaker administra-
tion after he handed in his resigna-
tion, pending consultations on a
new government which are set to
begin on Wednesday afternoon
local time.
“I’m ending this government
experience here,” Conte said after
an almost hourlong speech to the
Senate.
“It is irresponsible to initiate a
government crisis,” Conte said aft-
er Salvini tried to bring down the
government in the hope of snap
elections he believes will make him
premier.
Conte was speaking following a
week of fallout from Salvini’s deci-
sion to back out of the alliance
between his League party and the
anti-establishment Five Star Move-
ment, or M5S, on Aug 8, plunging
Italy into political turmoil.
After Conte announced his inten-
tion to resign, Senate speaker Elisa-
bette Casellati told Salvini to leave
the government bench and join his
party’s senators, where Salvini
said: “Thank you, finally, I would
do it all again.”Full powers
“The Italians vote with their
heads and hearts,” Salvini said,
invoking the Virgin Mary to “pro-
tect the Italian people” and repeat-
ing his call for snap elections while
also making a final appeal to M5S.
Caught on the back foot, Salvini
last week made the surprise offer to
back a key M5S proposal to cut the
number of lawmakers from 950 to
605, but only if new elections were
then swiftly held.
“Making citizens vote is the
essence of democracy. Asking them
to vote every year is irresponsible,”Conte said as League senators
booed and hissed.
“I heard you calling for ‘full pow-
ers’ and invoke (demonstrations in)
the piazzas to support you, which
worries me,” Conte said.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini
in 1922 assumed so-called full pow-
ers to govern the country at his
whim.
After more than four hours of
debate, Conte returned to speak
before going to Mattarella’s office at
the Quirinale Palace.
“If there was a lack of courage,
then I assume responsibility before
the country,” Conte told the Senate
as Salvini fidgeted nervously.
“And I note that the leader of the
League who has struggled with loy-
al cooperation lacked the courageto assume responsibility for his
behavior,” Conte said.
The end of the 14-month-old coa-
lition government opens the way
for Mattarella to begin consulta-
tions with political parties, with a
range of options available.
A snap election, the forming of a
new coalition without holding a
new vote, and, although unlikely,
the continuation of the current gov-
ernment would all be considered.Debt ratio
The political crisis has raised con-
cerns about the Italian economy,
whose debt ratio at 132 percent of
GDP is the second-biggest in the
eurozone after Greece.
Since the unwieldy government
was formed in June 2018, uncertain-ty under the coalition has cost the
country an extra 5 billion euros
($5.55 billion) in interest on its debt.
Salvini’s plan for a snap election
— more than three years early — had
envisioned a vote in October fol-
lowed by his being crowned as
prime minister.
According to opinion polls, the
League could form a coalition with
the anti-immigration Brothers of
Italy, and possibly Silvio Berlusco-
ni’s center-right Forza Italia.
But a bid by his rivals to put aside
their differences and forge an alli-
ance could derail Salvini’s plan, with
a coalition between M5S and the
opposition center-left Democratic
Party being discussed.AGENCIES—XINHUAItalian Premier Giuseppe Conte (center) is congratulated at the end of his resignation address to the
Senate in Rome on Tuesday. ETTORE FERRARI / ANSA VIA ASSOCIATED PRESSMerkel
urged to
budge
on Brexit
By JULIAN SHEA in London
[email protected]Boris Johnson made his first
overseas trip since becoming
British prime minister when he
visited German Chancellor
Angela Merkel in Berlin on
Wednesday. He repeated his
demand that the Northern Ire-
land backstop be dropped from
any withdrawal terms for the
United Kingdom’s divorce from
the European Union.
But his request was widely
expected to fall upon deaf ears for
the second time in 24 hours, hav-
ing already been firmly rejected
by European Council President
Donald Tusk on Tuesday.
With the so-called backstop in
place, some EU regulations would
continue to apply to Northern Ire-
land after Brexit in order to avoid
a hard border between the UK
territory and EU member the
Republic of Ireland. Johnson
wrote in the letter to Tusk that
such a provision would be “incon-
sistent with the sovereignty of the
UK as a state”. He even went so far
as to suggest that it threatened
the 1998 Good Friday Agreement,
which ended three decades of vio-
lent conflict in Northern Ireland.
However, Tusk brushed off
Johnson’s proposal and politi-
cians close to Merkel have
backed this stance, saying John-
son has taken completely the
wrong approach.
“The letter to the president of
the European Council is not a
serious offer, and Boris Johnson
knows it,” said Norbert Rottgen,
head of the German Parliament’s
Foreign Affairs Committee.
“To suggest the backstop could
weaken the Good Friday Agree-
ment — that’s strong stuff. If
Johnson really wanted to achieve
something on his visits to Paris
(where he will meet French Presi-
dent Emmanuel Macron on
Thursday) and Berlin, he would
have been well advised against
writing this letter,” Rottgen said.
Speaking before meeting
Johnson, Merkel said the back-
stop was only a position of last
resort, and once “a practical
solution” honoring the Good Fri-
day Agreement and allowing
trade is found, it would not be
necessary. However, she also
stood by the EU’s policy of not
allowing alterations to the with-
drawal agreement the EU
reached with Johnson’s prede-
cessor, Theresa May. The UK Par-
liament has already rejected the
agreement three times.
“The EU is ready to find a solu-
tion, but for that there is no need
to reopen the withdrawal agree-
ment. It is a question of future
ties. Britain needs to decide
which way it goes,” said Merkel,
who is particularly opposed to
hard borders, having grown up
in the divided postwar Germany.
Johnson admitted the response
to his letter had been “a bit nega-
tive” but a deal was still possible.
“I hope we’ll be making some
progress in the course of the next
few weeks,” he said. “As long as
they think there is a possibility
that parliament will block Brexit,
they are unlikely to make the
concessions that we need, so it’s
going to take a bit of patience.”Since Greenland isn’t
for sale, Trump cancels
upcoming Denmark visit
WASHINGTON — Two days after
he said buying Greenland wasn’t a
top priority, US President Donald
Trump canceled an upcoming trip
to Denmark, which counts the most-
ly frozen island as part of its king-
dom, after its prime minister
dismissed the idea.
Danish Prime Minister Mette
Frederiksen had called Trump’s
musing about buying the autono-
mous Danish territory “an absurd
discussion” after the former real
estate mogul-turned-president
began to talk up the idea.
At a meeting on Tuesday in Ice-
land of the Nordic government lead-
ers, Greenland Premier Kim Kielsen
said Trump’s idea “is not something
to joke about”.
Trump said on Sunday that he
was interested in such a deal for
strategic purposes, but said a pur-
chase was not a priority at this time.
“It’s not No 1 on the burner,” he told
reporters.
Trump even joked about his pro-
posal as it came in for ridicule, tweet-
ing a doctored photo of a glistening
Trump skyscraper looming over a
small village in the Arctic territory.
“I promise not to do this to Green-
land,” he joked on Monday.
But on Tuesday, Trump abruptly
canceled the visit, also by tweet.
Just a few hours earlier, the US
ambassador to Denmark tweeted
that it was “ready for the POTUS
@realDonaldTrump visit!” using an
acronym for “President of the Unit-
ed States” along with Trump’s Twit-
ter handle.
Trump wrote: “Denmark is a very
special country with incredible peo-
ple, but based on Prime Minister
Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that
she would have no interest in discuss-
ing the purchase of Greenland, I will
be postponing our meeting sched-
uled in two weeks for another time.”
He added: “The prime minister
was able to save a great deal of
expense and effort for both the Unit-
ed States and Denmark by being so
direct. I thank her for that and look
forward to rescheduling sometime
in the future!”
White House spokesman Judd
Deere said later that the visit to Den-
mark has been canceled.
The White House announced in
late July that Trump had accepted
an invitation to visit Denmark’s
Queen Margrethe and participate in
a series of meetings, including with
Frederiksen and business leaders.
The trip, set to begin at the end of
August, includes a stop in Poland to
commemorate the 80th anniversary
of the start of World War II.
Trump is expected to go ahead
with the Warsaw visit.
Asked about Greenland on Sun-
day as he prepared to return to
Washington after a vacation week at
his central New Jersey home, Trump
said “strategically ... it would be
nice” to own the island.
He also suggested he might not vis-
it Denmark at all, saying he didn’t
think the previously announced trip
had been “absolutely set in stone yet”.AGENCIES—XINHUADanish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (right) and Kim Kielsen,
premier of Greenland, attend a news conference in Nuuk, Greenland,
on Monday. RITZAU SCANPIX VIA REUTERS
832 foreigners lose Japanese residency status
By WANG XU in Tokyo
[email protected]A record number of foreigners
living in Japan were stripped of
their residency status in 2018, data
from the country’s Immigration
Services Agency showed, even as
Japan is widening its doors to for-
eign workers.
The immigration agency said on
Wednesday that it revoked visas of
832 people last year, more than
doubled the figure of a year earlier.
Almost 70 percent of them were
students and technical trainees
who failed to follow visa require-
ments.
By nationality, half of those who
lost their residency status were
Vietnamese. They were followed
by 152 Chinese, 62 Nepalese and
43 Filipinos.
Those who had their studentstatus rescinded numbered 412,
an increase from 172 in 2017.
Meanwhile, 153 foreign workers
had their technical trainee status
revoked, up from eight in the year
before.
The number of residency revo-
cations was the highest since 2005
when record-keeping began.
According to the Japanese Justice
Ministry, the most affected were
people on student visas who quit
their studies yet continued to
work in Japan and technical train-
ees who abandoned their assigned
jobs and were working elsewhere.
Meanwhile, there were 80 cases
in which a spouse or child of a Jap-
anese national were deprived of
their family member visas. Some
had obtained their visas through
fake marriages, the ministry said.
As a nation with the world’s fast-
est aging society coupled with alow birthrate, Japan adopted new
immigration laws to attract for-
eign workers in certain sectors
starting from April.
However, with an increasing
number of technical interns quit-
ting jobs due to long-criticized
“grim working conditions for for-
eigners”, the government has also
applied stricter standards for
revoking visas since January 2017.
The Japanese Justice Ministry
can cancel a visa for a wide range
of reasons, such as failure to
report a change of address within
90 days of moving.
Kazuyuki Motohari, an official
from the Immigration Services
Agency, said the Justice Ministry
will further crack down on those
who flout the law.Kyodo News contributed to this
story.SADC adopts Kiswahili as 4th working language
By EDITH MUTETHYA
in Nairobi, Kenya
[email protected]The Southern Africa Develop-
ment Community, or SADC, has
adopted Kiswahili as its fourth offi-
cial language. Other SADC official
languages are English, Portuguese
and French.
The decision was announced at a
recent summit of 16 southern Afri-
can heads of state in Tanzania. Kis-
wahili is already an official
language in Tanzania, Kenya and
Rwanda and of the African Union.
It’s also used in some parts of cen-
tral and southern Africa.
John Magufuli, chairman of
SADC, made his speech in Kiswahi-li at the summit, appealing to the
heads of state to fast-track the
adoption of the language.
According to a summit commu-
nique, the leaders approved Kiswa-
hili as the fourth SADC official
working language, in recognition of
the contribution of the former Tan-
zanian President Julius Kambarage
Nyerere’s role in the liberation
struggle of southern Africa.
The Pan South African Language
Board, which promotes multilingual-
ism, said the inclusion of Kiswahili
will help prevent the marginalization
of African languages.
“Africa is the only continent
where the majority of children start
school using a foreign language.
Across Africa, the idea persists thatthe international languages of wid-
er communication including Ara-
bic, English, French, Portuguese
and Spanish are the only means for
upward economic mobility,” a state-
ment from the board read.
According to the SADC leaders,
Kiswahili will be adopted at the lev-
el of council and summit, first as a
language for oral communication,
before eventually being adopted for
written official communication
within the bloc.
Kiswahili thus becomes the first
indigenous language to be used by
the bloc as an official language at the
interstate level, even as the world
celebrates 2019 as the international
year of indigenous languages.
David Maahlamela, chairman ofthe Pan South African Language
Board, said Kiswahili will help safe-
guard integrative multilingualism
inclusive of indigenous languages.
“This milestone achievement
toward recognition and elevation of
indigenous African languages across
the SADC region forms part of the
greater effort in ensuring develop-
ment, usage and intellectualization
of our heritage languages,” he said.
Maahlamela said the board’s
vision is that indigenous languages
will become commonplace at pro-
vincial, national, regional and con-
tinental levels.
“Kiswahili is inevitably well-posi-
tioned to integrate the SADC
region, thus we fully support this
long overdue resolution,” he said.Rescuers help a five-meter-
long sperm whale stranded
at San Bartolo Beach in
Lima, Peru, on Tuesday. The
injured whale was treated by
a veterinarian and then
returned to sea with the help
of rescue personnel and
surfers.
ERNESTO BENAVIDES / AFPWhale
rescue