Policemen Shot as New Italy Government Sworn in

Enrico Letta was sworn in as Italy’s new prime minister on Sunday and immediately faced an emergency after an unemployed man shot two police officers outside his office.

The 49-year-old gunman, from the poor southern region of Calabria, told investigators he had planned to attack politicians but had found none within range.

One of the officers was shot in the neck, hitting his spinal cord, and he was in serious condition, surgeons said. The other was shot in the leg.

In a surreal scene, outgoing prime minister Mario Monti received the official trumpet salute in the courtyard of the renaissance Chigi Palace before walking across the cordoned-off square, past police crouching over the scene of the shooting, looking for evidence.

Letta, 46, who will set out his program in parliament on Monday, has said his first task will be to tackle the economy, which has contracted for six consecutive quarters and pushed youth unemployment close to 40 percent.

Official data this month showed that alongside Italy’s 2.7 million officially unemployed in 2012, there were 3 million more who were so demoralized they had given up the search for work, a much higher number than in any other EU country.

The gunman’s hometown of Rosarno has a jobless rate far above the national average and is renowned for the activities of the local mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, and riots by African immigrants paid a pittance to collect the local fruit harvest.

Letta, on the right of his center-left Democratic Party (PD), ended two months of stalemate that followed an inconclusive general election by uniting political rivals in a broad coalition government.

This article appeared in print on page 2 of the April 29th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.