Near-final results
Populist parties surge in Italy vote, mainstream suffers
Two populist and stridently anti-European Union parties surged in Italy’s parliamentary election at the expense of the country’s traditional powers, but neither gained enough support to govern alone, near-final results showed Monday.
With no faction winning a clear majority in Sunday’s vote and the two rival leaders claiming victory, a hung Parliament was expected and long, fraught negotiations to form a new government lay ahead.
“Ungovernable Italy,” read the headline in La Stampa daily.
The Milan stock exchange closed down 0.4 per cent, with the Mediaset media company of one of the election’s biggest losers, three-time Premier Silvio Berlusconi, down 5.5 per cent.
According to the results released by Italy’s interior ministry, a centre-right coalition that included Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and the anti-immigrant League won about 37 per cent of the vote. The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement came in second with 32 per cent.
The centre-left coalition that has governed Italy since 2013 trailed badly at 23 per cent.
In an upset, the populist and right-wing League party led by Matteo Salvini surpassed the longtime anchor of the centreright, surpassed Forza Italia. The League captured around 18 per cent of the vote, while Forza Italia had less than 14 per cent, according to the ministry’s results.
A triumphant Salvini celebrated the victory of the centre-right bloc, saying it had won the “right and the duty to govern.” He said his party would lead that effort, with Berlusconi as coalition partner. The two met Monday at Berlusconi’s Milan residence, where the three-time premier congratulated Salvini, Forza Italia said.
“I am and will remain a populist,” Salvini said. He repeated his belief that joining the common euro currency was a mistake for Italy but said financial markets shouldn’t fear his party’s leadership.
The League leader’s suggestion that the election had produced a clear path to putting him in the premier’s office was challenged by the rival 5-Stars, the highest vote-getter of any single party.
The movement’s leader, Luigi Di Maio, immediately asserted his right to govern Italy. Di Maio noted Monday that no campaign bloc had obtained a majority and said the 5-Stars had strong showings from north to south, even though their main victories were in the south.
“The fact that we are representative of the entire nation projects us inevitably toward the government of the country,” Di Maio said at a news conference in which he took no questions. “Today, for us, it is the start of the Third Republic. And the Third will finally be the republic of citizens.”
Besides confirming the upswing for populist, right-wing and euroskeptic forces in Europe, the election verified the weakened status of the two political parties that have dominated Italian politics for decades — Forza Italia and the centre-left Democrats.
The election results were a stunning loss for the Democratic Party, the main partner in the current centre-left government. The Democrats received 25 per cent of the vote in 2013.
Former Premier Matteo Renzi announced he would resign as Democratic Party secretary after the new government is formed. For now, he excluded the possibility of the Democrats joining any government led by the League or the 5-Stars.
“It’s a total defeat,” Renzi said. Political analyst Wolfango Piccoli said the centre-right is best positioned to form a government, expected to secure 250 to 260 seats in the 630-member lower house. Still it will fall short of the 316 needed to control a majority.
The 5-Stars are expected to get 230 seats
“The vote has radically transformed Italy’s political landscape and its repercussions will be longlasting,” Piccoli, the co-founder of the Teneo Intelligence consultancy, said.