Future of Renzi's PD uncertain

(ANSA) - Rome, December 5 - The future of the Democratic Party (PD) led by Italian Premier Matteo Renzi is uncertain on Monday following the defeat of a referendum on Constitutional reform Sunday that brought Renzi's resignation.
    Francesco Boccia, a PD member and head of the Lower House budget committee, said the party should hold a congress in January with Renzi resigning from his post as party leader.
    Boccia said Renzi must "follow the example of (Pier Luigi) Bersani", one of Renzi's predecessors as chief of the centre-left party, who stepped down in 2013.
    "It no longer makes sense to keep such a directorate," Boccia said.
    "If Renzi wants to run again, he'll have to do it as a simple member of PD," he said.
    ANSA has learned that a national PD directorate meeting to discuss the referendum results, announced by deputy party secretary Lorenzo Guerini on Sunday following the vote, will most likely be postponed from its original scheduled date of Tuesday.
    Meanwhile in France on Monday, the front page of the afternoon edition of daily Le Monde was headlined "the unknowns post-Renzi".
    "A technocrat government should be nominated until the next elections," Le Monde said, adding that a "new period of uncertainty is opening in Europe, while the Italian economy and its banks haven't been fixed".