Draghi government causes internal rift in Five Star movement
After almost three years of continuous lurches, the Five Star Movement, which burst onto the scene with great force after the 2013 elections and clearly won the following general elections (held in March 2018), has fractured in the face of the formation of the Draghi government. And key in this regard has been the announcement by its former spokesman in the lower house in the XVII Legislature (Alessandro Di Battista) that he is leaving the party.
Di Battista's departure from the party has provided a clear point of reference for the Five Star deputies and senators who no longer recognise themselves as part of the party. As a result, first in the lower house and then in the upper house, a group of between fifteen and thirty people either voted against the Draghi government or absented themselves from the parliamentary session so as not to have to make their vote explicit, which is almost the same as voting against it.
These parliamentarians have nothing against Mario Draghi or his government, but the fact that not only voting in favour of it, but even joining it (remember that in the new government there are up to four ministers belonging to Five Star), is a public declaration that the party has "sold out" to power. And it should be remembered that the three governments that the legislature has had (the first and second Conte governments, and now the Draghi government) have been completely different from each other. In the first, the alliance was with Matteo Salvini's Lega, and the government's action was confrontational with the EU authorities on issues such as the budget and the fight against irregular immigration. In the second, for its part, it made a pact with the party that the Five Star Movement had most denigrated during the previous legislature: the Democratic Party (PD). This meant collaborating with the European Union, abolishing the security decrees passed during Salvini's time in office, and increasingly ceding more and more on the famous "citizenship income". Finally, the third "yes" of Five Star has been to a representative of economic power, the prestigious banker Mario Draghi, a key man in the Banking and Monetary Union that the Five Star Movement denounced time and again: the same party that has repeatedly said "no" to the ESM (the "save-the-States" mechanism), now votes in favour of the "father" of the same ESM as Prime Minister.
During the XVII Legislature (2013-18), Five Star used a particularly harsh discourse against the different centre-left governments (those headed consecutively by Letta, Renzi and Gentiloni) and against the traditional political class as a whole. They accused them all of corruption, of permanently incurring in "conflicts of interest", and of allying themselves with anyone in order to hold power. Matteo Renzi was the one who suffered the most, but he was not the only one: Nicola Zingaretti himself, Secretary General of the PD, when he presented his candidacy to lead the PD at the beginning of 2019 (managing to prevail over his party colleagues Martina and Giachhetti) stated in numerous public events that he would never make a pact with Five Star because it was the party that mercilessly attacked his party. So, when in August 2019, when the First Conte government fell, a new executive was formed between Five Star and PD, there was perplexity in the ranks of the PD over this pact, but in the case of some Five Star members, more than perplexity what occurred was dismay and deep regret. This agreement allowed the Five Star Movement to keep the presidency of the Council of Ministers and half of the government, but at the same time led it to abjure everything it had attacked for years.
More than one wanted to justify this pact on the grounds that it would prevent Matteo Salvini, who had literally left them stranded after only one of the five years of the so-called "government contract", from becoming the new master of Italian politics. But this could not hide the fact that they had accepted the invitation of the politician they detested me (former Prime Minister and now Senator for Tuscany Matteo Renzi) to govern together. By that time, Di Battista was already beginning to publicly disagree with the way his party was acting, but the truth is that Five Star was still increasingly involved in the country's governance by making deals with whomever it could: anything went as long as it controlled the levers of power. The reality was that, apart from the parliamentarians who were gradually leaving the party (already divided between "i governisti" and "i ribelli"), they all continued to hold their seats in both chambers.
But the straw that broke the camel's back was the support for the Draghi government. Because this is possible thanks to a coalition that includes Italia Viva, Forza Italia and the Lega: in other words, Matteo Renzi, Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini. Three "pragmatists" of Italian politics who have been verbally attacked on more than a few occasions by Five Star MPs. And now these same people, who wanted nothing to do with these parties, will sit on the Council of Ministers together with representatives of these formations (Elena Bonetti for Italia Viva, Mara Carfagna and two others for Forza Italia and Giancarlo Giorgetti and two others for the Lega).
Thus, two different blocs can be visualised in Five Star right now. A majority, which is already thinking about a coalition for the next general elections headed by former Prime Minister Conte and which would bring together Five Star, PD and LeU, and a minority sector that will probably form its own parliamentary group (remember that all those who voted "no" to the Draghi government have been expelled from the party without further contemplation) and will wait for Di Battista to create a new formation that recovers the essence and signs of identity lost by the party over the last three years.
In that sense, Di Battista would find it relatively easy to enter parliament with his new party after the next general election. The current electoral law in force (known as "Rosatellum bis") only requires a threshold of 3% of the votes to enter, and it does not seem to be a priority for the Draghi government to change the electoral law, although anything is possible. Di Battista has the advantage of being a person with strength, character and pull among Five Star militants. He has not been part of any of the three governments that have been formed (so no one could call him incompetent) and he has not even been a member of Parliament, as he resigned his seat in the legislature that began after the March 2018 elections. From here on, the question is, between now and the next general elections (there is a maximum of two years until the end of the legislature), how many more MPs will end up joining the ranks of "i ribelli". But what has become clear is that, for part of this peculiar formation, not everything goes and that the time had come to leave, regardless of whether they can revalidate their seats, something more difficult than ever for everyone after having been reduced by a third in the number of deputies and senators as a result of the victory of the "yes" to the "taglio" of parliamentarians in the "referendum" held in September last year.
In conclusion, Draghi is now more dependent than ever on Matteo Salvini's Lega, the other decisive party in sustaining the current "maggioranza". Just as well for the new government that Salvini needs time to implement his shift from anti-Europeanism to, at the very least, Euroscepticism, which guarantees, in principle, the viability of the current government until at least the end of January next year, when a new President of the Republic is to be elected. By that time, we will see, within Five Star, who wants to remain part of "i governisti" and who, on the other hand, wants to follow in the footsteps of "i ribelli", which has taken definitive shape this week.
Pablo Martín de Santa Olalla Saludes is Professor of European History at the ESERP University Centre and author of the book Italia, 2013-2018. Del caos a la esperanza (Madrid, Liber Factory, 2018).