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Italian politics and elections - news and discussion

Looks like the government will collapse now. Salvini threatening to withdraw ministers. Could be new elections in the coming months, elections Salvini is sure to get a larger share of the vote in. I think it's curtains for the five star movement, and we'll see a coalition of classic right wing parties (Lega, Forza d'Italia (aka Berlusconi's party) and Fratelli d'Italia (aka the real actual fash)), a near collapse in the five star vote and only a tiny gain for the Democratic Party (once Renzi's party, largely ineffective limbo-land ghost party since the start of this government)
 
He's pure jackboot evil

Refugee rescue boats carrying stranded migrants face fines of up to €1m (£918,000) after the Italian parliament passed a controversial law promoted by Matteo Salvini, the far-right interior minister.

Under the law, boat captains bringing rescued refugees to Italy will face arrest if unauthorised. Their vessels could be confiscated and the owners of the operations face steep fines of between €150,000 and €1m.

The Italian Senate, the country’s upper house, approved the law on Monday with 160 votes in favour and 57 against.


The lower house had already passed the law, which now has to be ratified by Sergio Mattarella, the Italian president.

The bill, which was introduced as a decree in June 2019, also introduces harsher penalties for crimes associated with public demonstrations, such as threatening a public official.

People who rescue refugees to be fined up to €1m under new Italian law promoted by far-right Salvini
 
A stitch up of PD and M5S might block Lega in the short term but longer term it only plays into their hands.
the League’s attempts to call an immediate no-confidence vote in the current leader, Giuseppe Conte, were thwarted on Tuesday by M5S and the centre-left Democratic party (PD).
Spearheaded by the former prime minister and PD senator, Matteo Renzi, factions from each party have been in talks about carving out a majority in parliament that could see the government through to the end of its term in 2023.
 
Dreadful useless Renzi trying to make a comeback.
“Salvini is weaker, and this showed on Tuesday: for the first time there was a message against his propaganda,” he said. “If the League won with fake news and propaganda, it will lose with reality and politics.”
Amazing how these people don't get these anti-democratic stitch-ups are driving support for populists like the League. So idelogically wedded to neo-liberalism that they can't but act against their own interests.
 
Yeah I just watched the whole thing live. Conte is resigning. He made open and heavy criticism of Salvini directly (even giving him the informal form of address, which is highly unusual in the Italian parliament) including but not limited to the Russian money scandal (salvini's party was one hundred per cent definitely in Moscow getting money from Kremlin-connected people to finance their Euro election campaign), his security laws (discussed above a little bit) and his constant presence on social media as opposed to in his government office (quite funny).

Now what will happen? One of two things. Either Mattarella, the President, will allow for the formation of a new governing coalition (potentially Renzi and the Five Star together, something Renzi had previously described as "impossible", hence the Lega-Five Star coalition which we had until today) or we have another general election, one where, no surprise, Lega/Salvini's share of the vote will increase enormously and the Five Star movement will all but collapse.
 
So everything's still up for grabs here: the PD (Partito Democratico, i.e. Renzi's party, now run by a guy called Zingaretti but Renzi remains as a powerful force within, imagine if Tony Blair was still a backbencher within Labour and had half the party's support) and the Five Star wankers can't agree on who would be the Prime Minister if they were to form a coalition. Five Star insist on keeping Conte, the outgoing PM who just quit as head of the Lega-Five star coalition. Not sure Conte even wants to, tbh. PD insist it should be someone new. If they can't come to an agreement in 24 hours we'll be back to the ballot box and that will almost see the return of Matteo Salvini even more powerful than before, perhaps able to form a right-wing coalition of his own with the Berlusconi and the fash.
 
Whichever way you look at it, it's bad for M5S. They're properly fucked. Lega just have to sit tight and wait for this extremely tenuous coalition to fracture and we'll back to the ballot box and as long as just keeps doing his thing (easy now he's the main voice of opposition) Salvini is the next PM. Maybe throw Berlusconi in as president of the republic one mattarella's gone just to make it really funny
 
I think you're right but the italian system(s) has an amazing capacity for doing politics at that level that just doesn't correspond to social forces. Never rule anything out politically.
 
it's just trolling, he becomes more popular the more the liberal newspapers criticize him, because people distrust journalists and hold them in contempt
 
Five Star giving their membership a vote (online! so modern) tomorrow on whether they want the party to form coalition or not. Think they'll vote for the coalition with PD maybe 70/30. Unless they've been massively infiltrated by Lega supporters who'll deliberately vote "no" to ensure new election and Salvini's probable victory. Which is unlikely, but not completely impossible.
 
M5S members voted 79% in favor of the new coalition with PD. See you when they fall out irrevocably, Salvini merda!
 
Certainly highlights the ostrichness of those that claimed pulling out of the coalition government would break the League
 
Court due to a deliver a verdict today on whether Salvini can be tried in a criminal court for charges relating to his refusal to allow refugees to disembark from a boat in Sicily last year. Much like Trump's impeachment, I feel it's all just a show by the opposition to seem like they're doing something, when in fact I don't think anything will come of it.
 
He's starting to bang the drum about a referendum on EU membership now - interesting! I think remain would win in an "italexit" (i prefer Quitaly as a name for it but the fucking journos eh) referendum were it held today but if it were a choice to stay in the EU but leave the Euro currency I think that would win over an option to stay in the Eurzone
 
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Italian referendum results in: a resounding YES to the cut in number of MPs from 630 to 400, and from 315 to 200 members of the Senate. The YES vote was supported by most major parties including Five Star and Salvini's Lega... the NO vote was mainly supported by a bunch of irrelevant left wing parties without any current representation (and for whom getting any representation in future will be even more difficult now).

On the other hand: the "left" coalition won regional elections in Tuscany, Puglia, Campania, while the right wing coalition have won in Marche, Liguria and Veneto (none of this is surprising, but the right will have hoped to win in Tuscany and Puglia. but they were quite some way out.)

all in all the referendum means the parties currently powerful will consolidate that power and perhaps this will reduce the famous instability of italian political coalitions in future... i'd say quite a good day for salvini, but not an excellent day (lega not continuing its push to supremacy nationwide as once seemed possible, but they'll be around and an important voice in italian politics for a long time to come)
 
Something I'd missed about Marche is that the right wing candidate is not even lega but the more or less openly-fascist fratelli d'italia led by the odious scumbag Giorgia meloni - them lot that still use the flame logo of the MSI
 
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