USA TODAY International Edition
Italy ‘ungovernable’ as election ends in limbo
Populists advance, but no clear winner emerges
Populist political groups surged in Italy’s parliamentary election, nearfinal results showed Monday. No single party or coalition won enough votes to govern the country alone, meaning it could take days or weeks before Europe’s fourth-largest economy has a new leader.
“Ungovernable Italy,” said the headline in the newspaper La Stampa.
Italy’s Interior Ministry said a center-right coalition brokered by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and the anti-immigrant League won about 37% of the vote. The anti-establishment Five Star Movement came in second with 32%.
The center-left coalition that has governed Italy since 2013 trailed badly at 23%. It includes the Democratic Party, a pro-EU party led by former prime minister Matteo Renzi, and More Europe, a liberal, pro-immigration group.
In an upset, the populist and rightwing League party led by Matteo Salvini surpassed Forza Italia. The League captured about 18% of the vote, while Forza Italia had less than 14%, accord- ing to the ministry’s results.
Italy’s Interior Ministry said the results showed the Five Star Movement, a strident anti-establishment and antiEuropean Union party led by Luigi di Maio, 31, was likely to end up with the most votes from Sunday’s election but still fall short of the 40% needed to form a government.
On Twitter, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, runner-up in last year’s French presidential election and a strident EU critic, celebrated the strong showing of the League party. She said that it represented a “new stage in the awakening of the people!” and that the “European Union (was) having a bad evening.”
Salvini insisted in a news conference that his center-right coalition has earned “the right and duty to govern,” and he was not interested in any new “strange coalitions.”
Still, the absence of an overall majority for any one group or coalition means Italy is left in limbo as the groups look to form alliances to get over the 40% threshold to form a government. A new election also could be held.
“Italy’s election has delivered a hung parliament with a decidedly populist flavor,” and the result could weigh on Italy’s fragile economic recovery, said Oxford Economics, a consulting firm.
A hung parliament is when no party or coalition controls a majority.