{"id":764672,"date":"2022-01-24T21:06:19","date_gmt":"2022-01-24T21:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/01\/24\/italys-presidential-election-underway-with-secret-ballot-silvio-berlusconi-drops-out\/"},"modified":"2022-01-24T21:06:19","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T21:06:19","slug":"italys-presidential-election-underway-with-secret-ballot-silvio-berlusconi-drops-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/01\/24\/italys-presidential-election-underway-with-secret-ballot-silvio-berlusconi-drops-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy&#039;s presidential election underway with secret ballot; Silvio Berlusconi drops out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Italys-presidential-election-underway-Berlusconi-drops-out.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p><span class=\"story_dl\">Jan. 24 (UPI) &#8212;<\/span> Italy&#8217;s parliament will choose a new president Monday in a secret ballot.<\/p>\n<p>More than 1,000 lawmakers will participate in the secret ballot &#8212; where several rounds of voting take place to choose the new president.\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"mt-5 text-center mb-5\">\n<div class=\"ad_tag\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Current president Sergio Mattarella will step down Feb. 3, and his successor will serve a seven-year term.<\/p>\n<p>The next president requires a two-third majority vote within the first three rounds of voting, and in the fourth round, an absolute majority vote.<\/p>\n<p>Silvio Berlusconi, Italy&#8217;s prime minister and potential president elect, dropped out after failing to get the necessary support for his bid.<\/p>\n<p>In a letter, he wrote that in the spirit of &#8220;national responsibly&#8221; his backers give up identifying him as a contender.<\/p>\n<p>It is expected to take about 6 hours for all the votes to be cast and counted.<\/p>\n<p>Parliament is also being cautious of COVID-19, and a drive-in voting station has been set up for electors who tested positive for the virus.<\/p>\n<p>The first COVID-19 positive voter came by ambulance on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jan. 24 (UPI) &#8212; Italy&#8217;s parliament will choose a new president Monday in a secret ballot. More than 1,000 lawmakers will participate in the secret ballot &#8212; where several rounds of voting take place to choose the new president. Advertisement Current president Sergio Mattarella will step down Feb. 3, and his successor will serve a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":764673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-764672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}