Populist coalition takes over in Italy
ROME: Populists took power in Italy for the first time on Friday with the swearing-in of a new coaltion government, fusing a party that delights in pillorying the establishment and one whose anti-migrant, euro-sceptic policies have seen it soar in popularity.
Political novice Giuseppe Conte, the new prime minister, and his 18 cabinet ministers took the oath in front of President Sergio Mattarella. Only five days earlier, the leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), Luigi Di Maio, was inciting followers to press for Mattarella’s impeachment.
The president had invoked his constitutional powers to reject the populists’ initial choice for economy minister because he was an advocate of a back-up plan to exit from euro-currency membership.
Mattarella’s act scuttled Conte’s first attempt to assemble a coalition, uniting the forces of Di Maio’s M5S and his populist rival Matteo Salvini, leader of the rightwing League party. The president approved Conte’s new cabinet list on Thursday, after Paolo Savona was moved from the economy slot to the ministry of European affairs. Di Maio will serve as minister of labour and economic development.
The initial failure of Conte to form a government had alarmed financial markets, which feared a quick return to the polls that risked being tantamount to a plebiscite on Italy’s keeping the euro currency.
But the markets were reassured by the formation of the new government, which came three months after elections resulted in a stalemate, with no single party or alliance winning control of parliament.
The last-minute compromise appointment of Giovanni Tria as economy minister was aimed at calming EU leaders’ jitters. He is close to the centre-right forces loyal to billionaire media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, the ex-prime minister.
Another cabinet pick seen as reassuring to those concerned that the populists could set Italy adrift from its strong ties with the EU is Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi. A former minister, he teaches EU law at LUISS University in Rome, which is championed by a powerful group of industrialists.
Yesterday M5S finally clinched national power, after spending five years in parliament as the largest opposition party.
Ahead of the March election, Conte, then a professor of law at the University of Florence, offered to serve as an M5S minister. He became a compromise choice for prime minister when rivals Di Maio and Salvini each refused to let the other hold the top post.
Salvini said he would get to work immediately to fulfil a campaign pledge to expel many of several hundred thousand asylum-seekers who were rescued at sea from human traffickers over the last few years, but are ineligible for asylum.
Public resentment over what was perceived as fellow EU nations’ failure to help ease the financial and logistical burden on Italy in caring for the flood of migrants helped boost the League’s popularity.
If the populists carry out their central campaign promises, which could risk swelling Italy’s already staggering high debt, the EU and financial markets might grow uneasy again.
Di Maio wants to give the jobless and low-income citizens a minimum monthly income of about $930 (R11 800), an electoral pledge that helped secure the movement’s triumph in the unemployment-plagued south.
Former British political leader Nigel Farage, a force behind Brexit, advised Italy’s populists to “stay strong or the bully boys will be after you”. He was referring to EU officials who recently raised the spectre of dire scenarios for Italians if the populists gained power. – AP/ African News Agency (ANA)