Opinion

The Five Stars movement is repeating the mistakes that will eventually bring about its political end

photo_camera Cinco Estrellas

The congress convened by the manager of the Five Star Movement has just taken place in order to set out its new political lines and to choose a direction that will assume the role played by Luigi Di Maio until 22 January. And this event only allows us to conclde that this party is still not rectifying the bad course that will end up leading it very surely to a definitive debacle in the next general elections, which will be called at the latest at the beginning of 2023.

    The party, it should be remembered, was born in 2009 as an "anti-political movement", but the reality is that after entering (and with much force) in Parliament after the February 2013 elections, it became a political party like so many others. However, using a mode of operation that is very much in vogue today (the so-called "assembly", with permanent consultation of the rank and file) and disassociating itself at all times from any possible pact with any political force. This explains why, when the time came to hold the elections in March 2018, they were the only formation to present itself alone: there was a centre-right coalition, also a centre-left one, and in the middle they remained as a basically transversal party.

    The reality is that, after making a pact with Matteo Salvini's Lega at the end of May 2018, and formalizing with him a pact for a legislature (the so-called "government contract"), they entered fully into the gears not only of parliament, but also of power, by becoming part of the central government. In addition, they stood for election with a head of the bill, Luigi Di Maio, Vice President of the lower house between 2013 and 2018.

    The main problem for Five Stars is that its new leader was soon better known as the "favourite son-in-law of all Italian mothers-in-law" (because of his clean and healthy appearance) than as a real political leader. And this was not only seen by Matteo Salvini, who did what he wanted with Di Maio and even drove him politically into a corner, but also by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, who under normal circumstances would have commissioned Di Maio to form a government for leading the most voted list by far (almost fourteen points ahead of the second, The government was appointed by the PD of Matteo Renzi) and instead preferred to give the task of government to a person totally unconnected with politics (the jurist Conte, who until then had been a professor of law at the University of Florence, and who, it is true, was on the list of ministers of the Five Star Movement but was not a party member). And the fact that Conte did have a university career (as opposed to a Di Maio whose academic training is not known) probably weighed much more heavily on Mattarella's decision than the fact that Di Maio had won the elections, in a country where almost thirty "premiers" in its 75 years of republican history have passed through the prestigious transalpine university institution without exception.

    It is well known that Di Maio had no choice but to resign barely two years after his party's electoral victory: with him first as Deputy Prime Minister (and also head of both Labour and Economic Development), and then as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the second Conte government, the harsh reality is that the party did nothing but go down both in terms of voting intentions and direct electoral support.
    

Cinco estrellas italia

    Of course, Di Maio's debacle was not only due to his many intellectual and personal shortcomings. Also key was his party's flagrant disregard for the key measure that had led them to win the 2018 elections: the famous "citizenship income", a subsidy worth 780 euros that should have reached some five million inhabitants in the country. It was there that the citizens discovered that this party, which had made honesty its main banner, had deceived them, since carrying it out in practice meant an enormous increase in public spending that the European Union was never going to allow, and this is what happened. So few, very few, transalpine citizens received this amount. The consequence of all this was a massive loss of votes for Cinque Stelle.

Stripped of its main policies at the hands of a much more skilful Salvini, in his second term of office (forged with the PD in September 2019) this peculiar formation continues to show that it has nothing relevant to offer the electorate. And that in addition to not being able to materialise the "income of citizenship", he has not the remotest idea of managing the public: his ministers, in both the first and second Conte governments, are standing out more for their irrelevance than for their ability to set a clear political line.

    But, despite all this being in evidence, the training had a unique opportunity at this congress to try to straighten out the course and rectify errors. After all, it had and continues to have room for manoeuvre: its parliamentary group, despite having nearly 50 members between the two chambers, continues to be by far the most numerous; the prime minister (Conte), although not a member of his party, is in constant contact with the main leaders of Cinque Stelle; and the general elections are not expected to take place until at least the end of January 2022, when Sergio Mattarella's presidential term will end and a new head of state will have to be elected. Thereafter, it is foreseeable that hostilities will begin between the parties belonging to the current coalition and that the new president of the republic (most likely the former governor of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi) will call elections before the end of that year. This still leaves time to attempt to change the dynamic of constant defeat.

    What is more, it may be said that, despite Di Maio's fiasco and the fact that none of the ministers of the current executive can really lead the party, they do have someone who could substantially lift the current situation of prostration of the formation. It is none other than Alessandro Di Battista, for years the other "strong man" of the party together with Di Maio. Because Di Battista must be thought of as having presence, charisma and a lot of pull among the party's voters. Not having a parliamentary seat or having been part of either of the two governments in which Five Stars has been present, his figure is safe from the general debacle that this party is suffering. But for whatever reason, in addition to choosing Di Maio before Di Battista to head the bill for the March 2018 elections (an operation that was, moreover, successful until it was discovered that Di Maio had no political backing), in recent months the Roman politician has been systematically marginalised.

    So, instead of betting on Di Battista knowing that the margin ahead is just over a year (at most two), and knowing that deep down Prime Minister Conte has no intention of being the leader of the party (he will hold out only until he has to resign as "premier", for what may be only a few months left given the enormous personal wear and tear on him), the "heavyweights" of the party have preferred to lean towards a "collegiate leadership" which, in the eyes of the voters, is almost like saying nothing. And they have also left the policies on which to bet without defining them: the only one who did speak out clearly during the convention was precisely the outcast (Di Battista), but at this moment it is useless.

    From the electoral point of view, in the coming months the Five Stars Movement will play practically no role: apart from losing the mayorship of Rome (which is no small feat), it should be remembered that no elections have been called to elect the region's government. But what will surely also happen is that Di Battista will not stand idly by waiting for the final debacle, and is already preparing a split in his party where he would surely be joined by prominent senators such as Gianluigi Paragone and the also outcast Davide Casaleggio Jr. With the vote of the party divided into two possible candidates (the official one and Di Battista), and knowing that very probably the "sbarramento" (threshold of votes necessary to enter Parliament) is going to rise from 3 to 5% for individual parties in the new electoral law that is being negotiated, it would not be surprising that from that Five Star Movement that swept the 2018 general elections there are no more... more than a mere memory. And that, instead, Di Battista recovers his lost protagonism. In any case, it will be time that passes judgement.

Pablo Martín de Santa Olalla Saludes is a Doctor of Contemporary History and author of the book Italia, 2013-2018. Del caos a la esperanza (Madrid, Liber Factory, 2018)