Italy’s League seeks to trigger elections, files censure motion

ROME: Italy’s ruling League party filed a no-confidence motion against the prime minister on Friday, a move that the party’s populist chief, Matteo Salvini, hopes will trigger snap elections and install him as the nation’s new leader. It is unclear when the motion will be debated, given parliament is in summer recess, but Salvini wants lawmakers to be summoned back to Rome for a vote next week, saying the ruling coalition is unworkable after months of open bickering. “Too many no’s are hurting Italy which instead needs to return to grow and therefore head to the polls quickly,” the League said in a statement a day after Salvini pulled the plug on its coalition with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. “Those who waste time are harming the country and only thinking about holding onto their posts.” Salvini’s shock announcement, which followed a period of intense public feuding between the two parties, throws the euro zone’s third-largest economy into deeper political uncertainty just as it was due to start 2020 budget preparations. An election could be held as early as October. Investors reacted by selling off Italian government bonds and stocks on Friday. Yields on 10-year bonds touched a five-week high, their biggest daily rise since May 2018. The Italian blue-chip index fell 2.3 per cent, with the turmoil helping to push other European stock markets lower. Salvini said in a statement on Thursday he had told Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who belongs to neither coalition party, that the alliance with 5-Star had collapsed after barely a year in power and “we should quickly give the choice back to the voters”. He said cabinet meetings were dogged by disputes. The head of state, President Sergio Mattarella, is the only one with the power to dissolve parliament, but he could first try to form a new government from the existing legislature before resorting to elections. Salvini urged lawmakers on Friday to return to parliament in Rome and break their summer vacations. “There’s nothing to say that we cannot make parliamentarians work in the middle of August. Lawmakers should get off their bums and work.” The political crisis has jolted Italians out of their August torpor, with millions of voters holidaying on the beach and facing the first autumn election in Italy’s post-war history. “It’s a mess basically,” said Marta Bonora, a 21-year-old languages student in Milan, noting that Salvini’s crackdown on immigration meant other problems were being ignored. Anna Scoccia, 63, who works at a newsstand in Rome, was also cynical: “This is all a big joke, it’s another of Salvini’s stunts to keep his popularity up. I don’t believe we will go to elections but I am still terrified by what comes next.” Prime Minister Conte turned on Salvini late on Thursday, demanding in a televised statement that Salvini explain to Italians why he wanted to bring down the government. Until a few weeks ago Salvini had repeatedly said that the government would last a full five-year term, but he brushed off Conte’s criticisms and said 5-Star was holding up the policies the country needed to boost its stagnant economy. Tensions came to a head on Wednesday when 5-Star and the League voted against each other in parliament over the future of a project for a high-speed train link with France. — Reuters