Italy labeled ‘ungovernable’ after election ends in limbo

Populists advance, but no clear winner emerges

Populist political groups surged in Italy’s parliamentary election, near-final 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,” read 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-European Union 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.

On Twitter, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, runner-up in last year’s French presidential election and a critic of the EU, 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 said in a news conference that his center-right coalition earned “the right and duty to govern,” and he was not interested in any new “strange coalitions.”

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 could be held.

“Italy’s election has delivered a hung parliament with a decidedly populist flavor,” and the result could weigh on the country’s fragile economic recovery, said Oxford Economics, a consulting firm.

A hung parliament happens when no party or coalition controls a majority of lawmakers.

Berlusconi is banned from becoming prime minister again for the next year because of a tax fraud conviction.