Italy faces a prolonged period of political instability after voters on Sunday delivered a hung parliament, spurning traditional parties and flocking to anti-establishment and far-right groups in record numbers.
With votes counted from more than 75 percent of polling stations, it looked almost certain that none of the three main factions would be able to govern alone and there was little prospect of a return to mainstream government, creating a dilemma for the EU.
A rightist alliance, including former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (Go Italy), held the biggest bloc of votes.
In a bitter personal defeat that appeared unlikely last week, the billionaire media magnate’s party looked almost certain to be overtaken by its ally, the far-right League, which campaigned on a fiercely anti-migrant ticket.
However, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement saw its support soar to become Italy’s largest single party by far, and one of its senior officials yesterday said that forming a coalition without it would be impossible.
Claudio Borghi, the League’s economics chief, raised the possibility of an alliance with the 5-Star Movement. Any government based on that combination would be euroskeptic, likely to challenge EU budget restrictions and be little interested in further European integration.
The full results were not due until later yesterday and, with the center-right coalition on course for 37 percent of the vote and 5-Star for 31 percent, swift new elections to try to break the deadlock are another plausible scenario.
Despite overseeing a modest economic recovery, the ruling center-left coalition trailed a distant third on 22 percent, hit by widespread anger over persistent poverty, high unemployment and an influx of more than 600,000 migrants over the past four years.
Prolonged political stalemate could make heavily indebted Italy the focus of market concern in Europe, now that the threat of German instability has receded after the revival on Sunday of a grand coalition under Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Italy is far from having sorted its long-standing problems, and now it will have new ones. Be prepared for long and complex negotiations,” said Lorenzo Codogno, a former chief economist at the Italian Treasury.
Parliament is to meet for the first time on March 23 and Italian President Sergio Mattarella is not expected to open formal talks on forming a government until early next month.
During two months of election campaigning, party leaders repeatedly ruled out any post-election tie-ups. However, Italy has a long history of finding a way out of apparently intractable political stalemate.
The 5-Star once rejected talk of any power sharing, but it now says it is willing to discuss common policies, but not negotiate over Cabinet posts.
Led by 31-year-old Luigi Di Maio, the movement was formed in 2009 and has fed off public fury over institutional corruption and economic hardship. Some have questioned whether other parties would be able to work with it.
“Di Maio wins, Italy ungovernable,” was the front page headline on La Stampa newspaper.
Borghi suggested that, with Berlusconi on course to lose the leadership of the center-right for the first time since he entered politics in 1994, a center-right headed by League leader Matteo Salvini could find a modus vivendi with 5-Star.
Borghi cited as an example the cancellation of a constitutional requirement to balance the budget.
Meanwhile, senior 5-Star member Riccardo Fraccaro said nobody would be able to govern without his party.
“We will ... [talk] with all the parties about what this country needs,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS