Roundup: Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino quits amid pressure

Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino has resigned following months of attacks by opponents and members of his own Democratic Party (PD) over a string of damaging stories since he was elected in 2013 for a five-year term.

"I have reflected a lot before taking this decision. I did so with the interests of Rome, the capital of Italy, my city, as my only pole star," Marino said in a statement addressed to Romans.

He underlined that according to Italian law his resignations can be withdrawn within 20 days. "This is not cunning on my part. It is the search for a serious verification as to whether it is still possible to rebuild these political conditions," he said.

The mayor will continue to carry out acts of ordinary administration until the resignations take effect, after which a commissioner would take charge of running Rome until a new election is held. On Friday, Marino celebrated a marriage.

In an interview published by La Stampa newspaper on Friday, the 60-year-old surgeon stressed that he was unfairly forced to step down when he lost support of PD, the ruling party of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and its ally Left, Ecology and Freedom (SEL).

"Renzi did not have the opportunity to appreciate the paradigm shift that we have made in this city," Marino said.

When he romped to victory with 63.9 percent of the vote in 2013, Marino inherited a capital with an exploding mafia scandal in which hundreds of millions of euros were uncovered to have been made by organizing crooked contracts for waste management, parks maintenance and other city services.

Marino's predecessor, right-wing Gianni Alemanno, was placed under investigation for his suspected links to the scandal. Marino's council also lost several members in the wake of the corruption probe.

Pressure began to mount on Marino amid criticism over the capital's crumbling infrastructures and failing public transport system. The mayor later came under attack for unpaid fines and unjustified expenses, and for revelations that he drove his car in the city's traffic-restricted areas.

On Tuesday, when Rome prosecutors opened a probe into his expenses, Marino wrote he had agreed to pay back 20,000 euros (22,705 U.S. dollars) of restaurant bills settled with a city hall credit card.

But according to various media reports, Marino's opponents were just determined to make him a scapegoat for the sorry state of the Italian capital after he touched on the interests of influential families and lobbies, both right- and left-wing.

He finally also lost support of the influential Catholic world. When he disobeyed the order to scrub a transcription of foreign gay marriages, a Catholic political movement registered a formal complaint against him for contravening state law.

Thursday, PD commissioner in Rome Matteo Orfini and SEL secretary Paolo Cento agreed to call for a no-confidence motion against him in the city council.

"I cannot conceal a serious fear that past mindsets will return to govern, the mindset of speculation, of illicit private interests, of cronyism and of the corrupting, mafia mechanism that also tainted PD," were the last words of his address to Romans. Endit