Populist parties duel for right to govern Italy
ROM E • Italy’s populist and Euroskeptic parties were locked in a battle to form a new government Monday after both failed to win an outright majority in the country’s general election.
The tumultuous result upended Italy’s political landscape, with more than 50 per cent of Italians voting for populist parties.
The competing camps of t he anti- i mmigration League party, led by Matteo Salvini, and the upstart Five Star Movement, led by Luigi Di Maio, were left duelling for the right to form a government. Italy’s complex election law left both parties short of the 40- per- cent share needed to form a government, opening the prospect of a prolonged period of political deadlock.
The vote was widely seen as an angr y reaction to Italy’s endemic unemployment and failure to control migration. It was also a stunning repudiation of Italy’s governing establishment, with the centre- left Democratic Party of Matteo Renzi and Silvio Berlusconi’s centre- right Forza Italia losing massive vote share to the anti-establishment parties.
The country faces deep uncertainty as the rival parties try to convince Sergio Mattarella, the president, that they each have a mandate to form the new administration.
“We’re like Christopher Columbus, sailing into the open sea without any idea where we’re going,” said Giovanni Orsina, a political analyst from Luiss University in Rome. “Anything could happen.”
Di Maio, a 31-year-old university dropout and former soccer stadium usher who leads Five Star, said the party “feels the responsibility to form a government.”
“This election was a triumph f or t he Five Star Movement. We are the winners. More than half of voters in some regions have voted for us.”
Five Star has historically said it would never enter into a coalition, although Di Maio said he would be “open to discussion with all political actors.”
But Salvini, who heads the right- wing League, was insistent that he should be prime minister.
The former j ournalist, who has pledged to deport hundreds of thousands of migrants to t heir home countries, said he had “the right and the duty” to form a government after his party quadrupled its share of the vote compared with 2013.
“Italians have chosen to take back control of the country from the insecurity and precariousness put in place by Renzi,” he said.
Salvini dismissed speculation that he would forge an alliance with Five Star to form a government. He said he was implacably opposed to messy “minestrone soup” coalitions.
The resounding win for populists drew comparisons with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. The big losers from the election were Renzi, and Berlusconi, who after 25 years in politics may finally be finished.