Just 10 days after taking office, the coalition government of Matteo Renzi suffered its first casualty on Monday night following the resignation of controversial junior minister Antonino Gentile.
As honeymoon periods go, this was a short one.
Just three days after he was appointed junior transport minister, Mr Gentile, a senator in the New Centre Right (NCD) party, was forced to resign in the wake allegations that he had put pressure on a local newspaper not to publish an article about his son.
Although he was under no formal investigation and denied any wrongdoing, such was the pressure within the government that he chose to resign.
A member of a powerful political family in the Calabrian town of Cosenza, Mr Gentile was accused of having used his influence to ensure the daily L'Ora d ella Calabria did not publish a report about his son Andrea.
The report said the younger Mr Gentile, a local health authority manager, was under investigation within the ambit of a scandal involving inflated consultancy payments.
On Sunday, another newspaper, Il Fatto Quotidiano , published the transcript of a phone conversation last month between the owner of L'Ora d ella Calabria , Alfredo Citrigno, and the owner of the printing press used by L'Ora , Umberto de Rose, in which pressure was clearly brought on Mr Citrigno to simply "drop" the story in question.
Neither Mr Citrigno nor the newspaper's editor, Luciano Regolo, were willing to drop the story.
Later that night, however, the printing press suffered a mysterious breakdown which stopped the print run and meant the paper was not on newsstands next day.
Concerns expressed
Following Mr Gentile's appointment last Friday, immediate concern was expressed by minority figures in Mr Renzi's Democratic Party (PD). The anti-Gentile campaign mounted when the editors of newspapers
La Stampa
,
La Repubblica
,
Il Sole 24 Ore
and
Corriere d
ella Sera
as well as of the TG7 TV News all called for his resignation.
With the opposition M5S protest movement threatening to call a confidence vote on Mr Gentile, Mr Renzi was faced with a potential internal PD revolt.
Rather than risk parliamentary defeat, the prime minister called on NCD leader Angelino Alfano to persuade his man to step down.
The Gentile incident may have established a costly precedent, given that four PD members of the government are currently under investigation, three of them in relation to abuse of expense allowances.