Silvia Enrico new president of Stop the Decline
Oscar Giannino remains premier candidate after scandal
20 February, 18:13
(updates previous)
(ANSA) - Rome, February 20 - Lawyer Silvia Enrico is taking
over the helm of the small free-market-oriented Stop the Decline
party, its 18-member national directorate announced on
Wednesday, but its gadfly leader Oscar Giannino remains the
party candidate for premier, Enrico announced.The directorate met in Rome on Wednesday to figure out what to do over Giannino's false claim he earned a master's degree at the prestigious University of Chicago.
Giannino quit on Wednesday. "Irrevocable resignation," tweeted Giannino in a move pundits say could boost ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's bid for re-election.
"It is a clean cut rule: he who errs pays. It should hold in politics and with public money," continued Giannino, who called his own error "private".
"Now down to pound left, right and centre," he continued.
"Giannino did not want to listen to reason, he was adamant," the party directorate explained.
Enrico added, "Oscar Giannino remains Stop the Decline's candidate for premier. If elected, he will take a decision on an eventual resignation after the election". The scandal broke less than a week before Italians were due to go to the polls for general elections when party figure Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, denounced Giannino's false claim to hold a master's from the same institution and resigned from the party in protest.
Stop the Decline has been campaigning largely on a meritocracy and transparency platform.
On Tuesday Giannino admitted that he had never pursued a master's at the University of Chicago but only an English language course "in 1994-1995, over the summer".
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