Three ministers of Slovenia's centre-left government, including Darja Radic who held the economy portfolio, resigned Monday after their Zares party quit the ruling coalition last week.
"We are unable to fulfil our important tasks in this government," economy minister Radic told a news conference here announcing that she and her two Zares colleagues had handed their resignations to Prime Minister Borut Pahor.
Pahor's government "does not enjoy public confidence for quite some time and is not operational," she said.
Radic and the ministers of Culture, Majda Sirca, and Public Administration, Irma Pavlinic Krebs, are all members of Zares, a junior partner in the ruling coalition before it pulled out last week after Pahor rejected its call for an overhaul of the government.
In May, other another junior partner, the Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia (DeSUS), left the coalition amid disagreements over pension reforms.
Without Zares and DeSUS, Pahor's government now has support from just 33 MPs in the 90-seat parliament.
Slovenians overwhelmingly rejected raising the retirement age to 65 from 63 in a referendum on June 5 that dealt a heavy blow to the deeply unpopular government and raised questions about its public finances.
Pahor has announced he will try to head a minority government until regular elections next year in coalition with his only remaining partner, the Liberal Democracy party.
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