Scandals Aren’t Enough to Stop Salvini
By David Broder
08.09.2019
It’s an index of the Left’s impotence that its main hope of stopping Matteo Salvini today lies in some sort of institutional “fix” to prevent early elections. After Salvini’s Lega pulled out of its coalition with the Five Star Movement (M5s) on Thursday, Italy looks likely to face a fresh general election this October, in which the hard-right party could win over 35 percent of the vote. With the Lega near-guaranteed victory, the slim prospect of Salvini not becoming premier depends on President Sergio Mattarella creating some sort of “stopgap” technocratic cabinet.
Read more at https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/salvini-lega-m5s-italy
The Five Star Movement Is Imploding
By David Broder
08.01.2019
On July 24, the Italian Senate lay half empty, as prime minister Giuseppe Conte answered claims that his interior minister is drawing on Russian oil money. Coy about evidence that Matteo Salvini’s aides had negotiated funds from Putin-aligned oligarchs, the premier said he did not yet have cause to lose confidence in the Lega leader. Salvini himself skipped Conte’s address, remarking that he had “less than zero” interest in what the prime minister had to say. Also absent from the Senate was the other party of government — Luigi Di Maio’s Five Star Movement (M5S). Its senators variously claimed that they were protesting against Salvini’s conduct, or else objecting to Conte’s endorsement of the TAV rail project, long a target of M5S objections.
Rear more at https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/italy-five-star-movement-matteo-salvini-m5s-lega
Crisis and chaos (even by Italian standards)
By Matteo Salvini put his finger on the Italian government’s “off” switch, but he hasn’t found a way to push it yet.
Almost a week after the League leader surprisingly announced that after 14 months he wants to put an end to the coalition government with the 5Star Movement, and that he wants to go to the polls as soon as possible, the government is still in place.
And it might stay that way for a good while longer.
Read more at https://www.politico.eu/article/italian-government-crisis-chaos-salvini-conte/
Can anyone stop Matteo Salvini?
By Matteo Salvini becomes prime minister, gets a pro-Putin president elected, governs with a party even further to the right than his own and clashes with Brussels to the point of taking Italy out of the euro.
That’s the nightmare scenario for Europe’s political mainstream, following Salvini’s decision to trigger the downfall of the current Italian government. And it certainly can’t be excluded. Salvini’s League party is riding high in the opinion polls and his opponents are in disarray. After an election, he may be able to form a government with the far-right Brothers of Italy, a party that doesn’t hide its admiration for the country’s fascist past.
Read more at https://www.politico.eu/article/can-anyone-stop-matteo-salvini/
