Rome triumph puts Italy protest party into top league

Fanny Carrier,AFP 12 hours ago Rome (AFP) – Italy’s anti-establishment Five Star movement (M5S) has achieved a major breakthrough by winning Rome’s mayoral election.

The country’s second biggest political force is a hard-to-describe broad church, resisting traditional categories of left and right and defined by its anti-establishment stance.

How did it emerge?

M5S as founded by comedian Beppe Grillo in 2009 as an alternative to established politicians and institutions in a country long blighted by corruption.

It eschewed traditional political channels and the media for civic lists and citizen meet-ups, embracing the expletive “vaffanculo” (“go screw yourself”) as a political slogan.

Co-founder Gianroberto Casaleggio, a communications entrepreneur considered the M5S’s “guru” until his death in April, created a series of online platforms for “direct democracy”, and all the party’s candidates are elected online.

What does it want?

The party is built on the dual pillars of mistrust of traditional politics and honesty of its members.

It wants greater transparency, a reduction in political salaries, action in favour of the environment, a referendum on the euro, growth measures for small and medium businesses and free Internet for all.

Populist or leftist?

Although based on a similar mass rejection of the establishment as Spain’s Podemos and Greece’s Syriza, the M5S is not left-wing or anti-austerity.

Grillo called for a “clamp-down” on humanitarian visas for asylum seekers in 2014. And the movement withdrew its support for gay civil unions in parliament earlier this year at the last minute, despite 80 percent of its voting members favouring the bill.

A government in waiting?

The M5S made a sensational debut by scooping 25 percent in the 2013 general election, becoming the second biggest political force in Italy behind the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) in one swoop. https://www.yahoo.com/news/rome-triumph-puts-italy-protest-party-top-league-235419690.html