Loading
IT IS A PDPD PD Your browser does not support the element. fair bet that any party that finds itself holding a “constituent assembly” more than 15 years after its foundation has problems. The Five Star Movement, which is to stage just such an event on November 23rd and 24th, is no exception. The assembly is being held against the background of a bitter split between the party’s founder, Beppe Grillo, and its president, Giuseppe Conte. And in Italy’s latest regional election, last month in Liguria in the north-west, the Five Stars mustered less than 5% of the vote.Though often dismissed as a bit of a joke—Mr Grillo is, after all, a comedian—the Five Starsmatters. It was in each of the past three governments, the first two of them led by Mr Conte. Back in 2018, when it was at its height, it won 33% of the vote. In steady decline since then, it still has a substantial representation in parliament (with 50 of the 400 deputies in the lower house and 26 of the 200 senators). Most importantly, however, it divides the opposition to Giorgia Meloni’s government, ensuring that her right-wing coalition remains comfortably ensconced in office.Paradoxically, last month’s election in Liguria highlighted the Five Stars’ importance. Reeling from a local corruption scandal, Ms Meloni’s conservatives looked doomed to lose the region’s governorship. Italy’s main opposition group, the Democratic Party (), had a field day, taking 28% of the votes—almost double the share of Ms Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party. But because the Five Stars fared so poorly, the opposition was unable to wrest control of the region from the right.Part of the problem is the Five Stars’ on-off romance with the . Sometimes the two parties join forces, as they did in Liguria. But in the previous regional election, in Piedmont, they fielded separate candidates. The Five Stars’ hesitancy is in turn a product of its failure to decide where—if anywhere—it stands on the conventional political spectrum.Mr Grillo and his political Svengali, the late Gianroberto Casaleggio, dreamed of a revolution. They envisaged their movement as a vehicle for the abolition of parliamentary democracy and its replacement with a new kind of direct democracy that exploited the possibilities of the internet. The Five Stars’ early supporters, while united by a shared concern for the environment, fell on both sides of the political divide, and claimed to be neither of right nor left but pragmatists. Under Mr Conte, though, the partyhas adopted a more left-wing agenda and one that—awkwardly for the —opposes military aid to Ukraine.Meanwhile—and to Mr Grillo’s growing dismay—the Five Star Movement has become an increasingly conventional party, albeit one whose elected representatives and office-holders are obliged to step down after two terms, a measure intended to prevent them becoming career politicians. In a recent interview, Mr Conte accused the party’s founder of carrying out “acts of sabotage” aimed at blocking its new course. Mr Grillo hit back, comparing Mr Conte to the fraudulent Wizard of Oz and accusing him of playing the “usual games of the old politics”.The assembly will define the movement’s political stance and decide whether to scrap the two-term rule, which prevents itfrom cultivating experienced and publicly recognisable politicians to present as candidates. It has always been regarded as a fundamental tenet of a movement that aspired to give ordinary people a voice in politics. Even more controversially, the assembly will decide what to do about Mr Grillo. He remains the Five Stars’ “guarantor”, a job that at the moment lasts for an indefinite period and comes with a contract that gives him an annual salary of an eye-popping €300,000 ($316,000). Delegates to the constituent assembly are expected to vote on whether to impose a time limit on the guarantor’s mandate, curb his powers—or perhaps even abolish the post and its salary altogether. For Mr Grillo, that would be no laughing matter.
