Italy’s populist surge reveals split

Voters reject traditional left, right parties in north, south

The Italian election was a rejection of traditional left and right parties in both the north and south of the country – but for different reasons, experts said.

The far-right League party conquered the north, worried about the rise in immigration, while the anti-establishment Five Star Movement took the south where concerns about the economy dominate.

“In the south, the Five Star vote was a protest of a part of the country that feels neglected as the economic recovery is only being felt in the north,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, politics professor at Rome’s Luiss university. “We can’t be surprised that southern regions, where youth unemployment has spiked and traditional parties have failed to resolve the problem, voted massively in favor of a movement that expresses resentment and anger.”

Disillusionment already made itself felt in a 2016 constitutional referendum in which southern Italy voted against the proposed reform and then prime minister Matteo Renzi’s center-left government.

Political expert Giovanni Orsina said the election represented a “transition” between the old political order and a new one, delivering “a clear message.”

“It is clear that the two weak links in this phase were the [center-left] Democratic Party and Forza Italia [Go Italy], Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right party, which have been in power for decades.”

A right-wing coalition including the League and Forza Italia came first in Sunday’s vote with 37 percent, but Berlusconi’s party was unexpectedly beaten into second place by the League within the alliance.

League leader Matteo Salvini, 45, has positioned himself as “a proud populist.”

“Italy is fed up with champagne socialists,” he said.

With 17 percent of the vote, the party has done well in relatively wealthy areas of northern Italy where concerns about security and immigration are high and euroskepticism is rife.

“The most important thing that Salvini says is ‘Italians first. I’m not racist but I think that people who come to Italy should come here to work and not commit crimes or violence like rapes,” Evaristo Bellu, a 56-year-old supporter of the League, told AFP.