Populist parties surge in Italy vote
ROME — 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 attracted enough support to govern alone, near-final results showed Monday.
With no faction winning a clear majority in Sunday’s vote and the leaders of the rival populist parties both claiming victory, the election was expected to produce a hung Parliament and long, fraught negotiations to form a new government.
“Ungovernable Italy,” read the headline in La Stampa daily.
The Milan stock exchange closed down .4 percent, with the Mediaset media company of one of the election’s biggest losers, three-time Premier Silvio Berlusconi, down 5.5 percent.
According to the results released by Italy’s interior ministry, a center-right coalition that included Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and the anti-immigrant League won about 37 percent of the vote. The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement came in second with 32 percent.
The center-left coalition has governed Italy since 2013 and trailed badly at 23 percent.
In an upset, the populist and right-wing League party led by Matteo Salvini surpassed the longtime anchor of the center-right, surpassed Forza Italia. The League captured around 18 percent of the vote, while Forza Italia had less than 14 percent, according to the ministry’s results.
A triumphant Salvini celebrated the victory of the center-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 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 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.
Besides confirming the upswing for populist, right-wing and euroskeptic forces in Europe, the election verified the weakened status of the two political parties have dominated Italian politics for decades — Forza Italia and the center-left Democrats.
The election results were a stunning loss for the Democratic Party, the main partner in the current center-left government. The Democrats received 25 percent of the vote in 2013.