{"id":1001,"date":"2016-12-05T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/?p=1001"},"modified":"2018-02-10T10:52:25","modified_gmt":"2018-02-10T09:52:25","slug":"anti-immigrant-anti-euro-populists-gain-ground-in-italy-as-prime-minister-resigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/?p=1001","title":{"rendered":"Anti-immigrant, anti-euro populists gain ground in Italy as prime minister resigns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matteo Renzi’s attempt to strengthen his hand did just the opposite.<\/p>\n

by Stefano Pitrelli and Michael Birnbaum, The Washington Post<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

ROME \u2014<\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s anti-elite parties vowed Monday to join forces with other insurgents around Europe as Prime Minister Matteo Renzi prepared to resign, but it was unclear whether an unlikely alliance of disaffected voters could propel the populists to office.<\/p>\n

Italy plunged into political uncertainty Monday after the decisive defeat <\/a>of Renzi\u2019s signature constitutional revision plan, which was meant to strengthen his hand and defuse the establishment-bashing movement. The rejection by voters had the opposite outcome.<\/p>\n

Now, anti-immigrant, anti-euro populists on the left and right who have steadily built power as an alternative to Italy\u2019s old-guard \u00adpolitical leadership are seeking to transform their success into a chance at their nation\u2019s highest office. The eclectic Five Star movement is polling at 30 percent, neck and neck with Renzi\u2019s center-left Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lesson for everyone: You can\u2019t always lie to the people without suffering the consequences,\u201d said Beppe Grillo,\u00a0the caustic comedian<\/a> who founded the Five Star movement.<\/p>\n

But markets and leaders elsewhere in Europe reacted with caution Monday to the Italian shifts, reflecting the steep barriers that remain before insurgents could capture Italy\u2019s top job.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The youthful, Coca-Cola-
\nguzzling Renzi had portrayed himself as a lone warrior against the Euroskepticism that fueled Britain\u2019s vote in June to break with the European Union and gave tail winds to right-wing political leaders in France and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that is going on all over Europe, if you look at the momentum,\u201d said Manlio Di Stefano, a Five Star lawmaker in the lower house of Parliament. \u201cPeople are really tired of the same kind of politics. Every term is the same, every government is the same, so people are reacting.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Renzi also alienated Italian voters over 2\u00bd years in office by failing to jump-start growth in Europe\u2019s fourth-biggest economy. The referendum results \u2014 59 percent of voters opposed the revisions \u2014 may have reflected enmity toward Renzi as much as a wave of populism washing over the Italian electorate.<\/p>\n

Much like the coalition of \u00adworking-class voters and the right-wing establishment that drove Donald Trump to victory in the United States, the forces that united to defeat Renzi came from across Italy\u2019s political spectrum. The diverse views may make collaboration difficult.<\/p>\n

<\/i>The decision about Renzi\u2019s successor as prime minister falls to Italian President Sergio Mattarella, an establishment stalwart who is unlikely to clear an easy path for Five Star backers. A likely scenario could be a caretaker government headed by a different leader from Renzi\u2019s center-left Democratic Party who would hold office until new elections in early 2018. Mattarella asked Renzi on Monday to hold off on his resignation until the government passes next year\u2019s budget, a potential delay of a few days or a week that will buy some time for succession planning but does not significantly alter the political situation.<\/p>\n

\n
Once Renzi\u2019s successor is announced, the process of forming a new government will take weeks.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Italy is no stranger to political chaos, and the next government will be the 64th in 70 years. But many Italians are growing weary of a long stretch of unelected prime ministers, going back to 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people do not recognize their vote in the government. Because it\u2019s what in the E.U. context is called a deficit of democracy,\u201d said Stefano Stefanini, a former senior Italian diplomat who is now a political consultant in Brussels.<\/p>\n

Mainstream parties also plan an overhaul of an electoral law that would make it far harder for the Five Star movement to govern without a coalition, yet another barrier to its quest to capture office.<\/p>\n

The Five Star movement has a patchwork collection of policies that are more Bernie Sanders than Donald Trump. Grillo, the founder, has praised Trump and agitated against migrants, but many of the movement\u2019s rank and file have softer edges. The party has promised to hold a referendum on Italy\u2019s membership in the euro zone if it captures office, criticizing the currency as a project of the elite that has harmed ordinary Italian workers. The movement also agitates against corruption and for the environment. And it forms many of its policies through an online platform for its members that it brags is a cutting-edge tool for direct democracy.<\/p>\n

<\/i>But when Five Star members have captured power, they have sometimes had difficulty governing, most notably in Rome, where a Five Star mayor has struggled to deliver public services since she took office in the spring.<\/p>\n

The mayor of Turin has done better. But she trained at one of Italy\u2019s top universities, is from a prominent business family and has governed as a moderate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Italians are essentially unhappy with the establishment, with the establishment parties. They are looking at the Five Star movement, but they are still looking for credible faces,\u201d said Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of \u00adTeneo Intelligence, a political risk consulting firm.<\/p>\n

Even if the insurgent populists never come to office, they are guiding the national political discussion by sending mainstream politicians scrambling to appeal to their anti-system voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy simply being there, they shape the political agenda, and they force the system to react to them,\u201d Piccoli said.<\/p>\n

If the Five Star movement does succeed in calling a referendum on the euro, the move\u00a0could pressure Italy\u2019s shaky banking sector and rekindle the euro crisis<\/a>. Shares in Italian bank stocks were broadly down Monday; the nation\u2019s most troubled bank, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, lost 3.9\u00a0percent in late-afternoon trading.<\/p>\n

But reflecting the overall short-term calm, Italy\u2019s main stock exchange in Milan was slightly down in late-day trading. Many other European markets, including London\u2019s FTSE and Germany\u2019s DAX, were up.<\/p>\n

European leaders said Monday that they were confident Italian politicians would overcome the turbulence without setting off a broader crisis on the troubled continent, which has struggled in the face of Greece\u2019s fiscal collapse and an unprecedented surge of migrants and refugees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a strong country with strong government, and I have every confidence in Italy to deal with the situation,\u201d Pierre Moscovici, the senior E.U. official in charge of economics, told France 2 television.<\/p>\n

Yet the Five Star movement is surging against its competitors.<\/p>\n

In head-to-head polling against the ruling Democratic Party, it is the clear favorite, with an advantage of 53 percent to 47 percent, according to a survey from the EMG polling group released Sunday. Measured against all the parties in Italy, Five Star and the Democratic Party are in a dead heat.<\/p>\n

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Renzi allies said Monday that the rejection of the constitutional changes has dealt Italy a significant blow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThe risk of disintegration began with Brexit, when a very important member was lost,\u201d said Sandro Gozi, a top Renzi ally who is Italy\u2019s undersecretary of state for European affairs. \u201cThe European Union needs to depart from the status quo, because it makes the future much harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Birnbaum reported from Brussels.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matteo Renzi’s attempt to strengthen his hand did just the opposite. by Stefano Pitrelli and Michael Birnbaum, The Washington Post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104,50],"class_list":["post-1001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-washpost","tag-m5","tag-politica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1002,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions\/1002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}