Salvini vows to return to power

Renzi ready to form breakaway party

PONTIDA, Italy, Sept 16, (Agencies): Down but not out, Matteo Salvini pledged Sunday to tens of thousands of die-hard backers of his populist League that he will return to power stronger than before, as he seeks to rebound from a grave political miscalculation that pushed his party from government.

“I’d rather concede seven ministry posts to traitors now that we will win back with interest and transparency in a few months,” Salvini told an annual pilgrimage of cheering, banner-waving League voters to a foothill Lombard town with long historical associations to nationalist movements.

This year’s gathering took on additional significance as Salvini whips up his base in opposition to the new 5-Star-Democratic Party government that took office this month after his failed move to force new elections landed the League as the head of Italy’s opposition and deprived him of his bully pulpit as the hard-line anti-migrant interior minister.

“I expect (Salvini) will continue to be an effective force because the issues he gained credibility for - migration, taxes and security – remain salient,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political science professor at Rome’s LUISS University. “And if the (new) government does not address these issues, Salvini’s strength will remain pretty much the same.”

The League remains the most popular party in Italy, and the League voters attending the Pontida pilgrimage made clear they were behind their “captain.”

Many in the crowd placed the blame for Salvini’s fate on the grassroots 5-Star Movement for quickly realigning itself from its League coalition to form a new government with the one-time enemy, the center-left Democratic Party. They branded Premier Giuseppe Conte, head of both governments, a traitor.

Luca Carminati, a laborer from nearby Bergamo, said he switched from voting for the center-right to the League five years ago. He said he has seen his boss struggling to keep a small business afloat in the face of high taxation and bureaucracy.

“I like Salvini because he is the only one that fights the idea of a European Union, which I do not support, because I believe the European bureaucrats do not do Italy any good,” Carminati said. Salvini “is trying to give value to the Italian people again.”

During his speech Salvini muted his often-fiery tones, urging supporters to be patient and polite in their political discourse. This came after a League lawmaker from Veneto drew fire for insulting Italy’s president a day earlier. Still, speakers who took the stage before Salvini spoke of revolution and resistance, and the rank-and-file verbally attacked Italian leftist journalist Gad Lerner, who was flanked by police bodyguards. Lerner has often clashed with Salvini.

Warned

Salvini also hit a euro-skeptic note as he warned Italy’s European allies in shaky French, German and English that “the Italian people are no one’s servant.”

Speaking to his base, Salvini said he would make a long-sought flat-tax of 15% a priority if he lands back in government and that in the meantime he would take the fight against migration to the level of local and regional governments, where the League has long prospered.

He railed against Islam, burqas and pressed for more regional autonomy from Rome.

Furthermore, former prime minister Matteo Renzi is poised to break away from the ruling Democratic Party (PD) and set up a new centrist force in an effort to claim the middle ground of Italian politics, two allies said on Sunday.

Such a move, coming days after the centre-left PD has forged a new coalition with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, would shake up Italian politics and might make it harder for Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to keep his government in office.

Renzi, who led a PD administration from 2014-2016, was instrumental in piecing together the new coalition after the far-right League walked out of its previous alliance with 5-Star in the misguided hope of triggering an early election.

However, Renzi has had an abrasive relationship with the PD after he resigned as prime minister in 2016 and there have been persistent rumours that he was planning to set up a new party, taking with him a group of disaffected PD parliamentarians.

“It is like those couples who have done all they can to stay together, but in the end they just can’t do it,” PD lawmaker and Renzi ally Ettore Rosato told La Repubblica.

Renzi, who was only 39 when he became prime minister and has repeatedly chaffed against PD left-wingers, declined to confirm reports of his imminent departure, saying only that he would talk about his plans at a gathering of supporters next month.

“I will talk about national politics (then) and will be clear like I have never been in the past,” he said on Sunday.

Senior PD figures urged him to hold back. “Don’t do it. The PD is everyone’s home, your home, our home,” said Dario Franceschini, culture minister and a PD grandee.

“Don’t let us break up, don’t weaken us by splitting the party. Let’s challenge the right united,” he wrote on Twitter.

Newspapers speculated Renzi might take some 31 lawmakers with him from both the lower and upper houses, including at least one minister and two government undersecretaries.

While any such group would remain part of the coalition, it would potentially complicate Conti’s life, meaning he would have to navigate one more set of political demands to keep his government afloat.