Salvini’s bid to bring down Italy’s coalition government
Italy’s far-right deputy PM, Matteo
Salvini, is riding high, said Andrea
Fioravanti in Linkiesta (Milan). His Brussels-bashing anti-immigrant rhetoric has struck a chord with voters. After 14 months in a fractious two-party coalition with the antiestablishment Five Star Movement (5SM), his League party has climbed to around 38% in the polls (from 17% last year), while support for 5SM has dwindled to 15%. Now Salvini wants to bank those gains and run Italy on his own. Last week, he declared he could no longer work with 5SM and pulled out of the governing coalition, prompting Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who is independent of both parties, to resign in disgust. By seeking a vote of no confidence, Salvini is irresponsibly “looking for a pretext to return to the polls”, said Conte. Which indeed he is. But getting his wish won’t be easy: Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, is likely to invite others to try to form a government, or even to appoint an interim technocrat administration.
Salvini’s big problem is that the League is outnumbered in parliament, said Michael Braun in Die Zeit (Hamburg): other parties could well gang up to stop him forcing an election. Until recently, that would have been unthinkable: after last year’s poll, 5SM categorically ruled out an alliance with the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), which it depicted as the epitome of corrupt Italian politics, while the PD’s then leader, ex-PM Matteo Renzi, swore he’d never get into bed with 5SM. But now, in an “astonishing” reversal, the 5SM’s figurehead, comedian Beppe Grillo, has called for a new coalition to stop the League “barbarians”. And last week, the two parties voted together to postpone Salvini’s no-confidence motion. It’s not impossible that they could now join forces in a pact that might last to 2023.
Let’s hope his opponents succeed, said Le Monde (Paris): Salvini poses an “existential challenge” to Europe. He has “criminalised” those who aid refugees; he prefers Russia’s foreign policy to the EU’s. And his plans for huge tax cuts could provoke a devastating storm on financial markets: at s2.3trn, Italy’s debt is unsustainable. The League even talks of a “smooth” exit from the euro, when it’s clearly not possible. What’s odd is that Salvini, who has clearly underestimated the obstacles to bringing down the government, seems to be in such a rush, said Oliver Meiler in Tages-Anzeiger (Zurich). Could it be due to his anxiety over claims that the League is being funded by the Kremlin? Recent news reports suggest that a Salvini aide solicited illegal contributions from Russia – and no proper explanation has been given. So maybe Salvini is in a rush to call an election before the scandal dents his support. But it could backfire: the scrutiny of an election could make voters think again, and with his bubble burst Salvini may then find his “hateful” past coming back to haunt him.