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With half of the country on vacation and the Parliament closed, Matteo Salvini blew up a political crisis in full heat that he said would have catapulted him to the presidency of the Council of Ministers. But 'Il Capitano', as his followers call him, did not have a pact between his former partners of the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party (PD). Of prime minister in the shade, Salvini is relegated to the opposition banks. The dream of a liguist Italy will have to wait.

"I ask the Italians to give me full powers to be able to do what we have promised," the League leader and vice president of the Government launched from an electoral rally, calling off the coalition with the Five Star Movement, with whom he had ruled the Last 14 months It was August 8. His party touched 36% in the polls, the Italians lined up to photograph themselves with the charismatic Interior Minister during their electoral tour of the country's beaches, between mojitos and girls in bikinis dancing to the rhythm of the national anthem. Parliament had just given the green light to a new immigration law that criminalizes the work of humanitarian organizations in the Mediterranean. Salvini was at his best, but he made a couple of fatal mistakes.

"Salvini has demonstrated excessive pride and underestimated his opponents, the tactical ability of Matteo Renzi and the transformation of Luigi Di Maio. He has not taken into account that Italy is a parliamentary democracy where the League has 17% of the vote. It is not easy to dissolve the Chambers and call elections. And this a leader like him should know, "says Giovanni Diamanti, author of the book 'Salvini Phenomenon'. Salvini's ultimatum has become a boomerang. Political analysts consider it a goal in their own door. "The tactical strategy with which the Government has fallen has turned against it because it has lost one of its main strengths: to be close to the ordinary and distant people of the old politics," says Diamanti.

From outside, the Lombard politician says he is not sorry and denounces an international plot to justify the epilogue of the Italian experiment. However, this week, cornered, tried to amend his mistake by offering Luigi Di Maio to recover the government coalition with the 'grillino' leader as prime minister. Di Maio, who no longer trusts him, claimed his 'vendetta' making public the desperate offer of the League and confirming the pact with the PD.

"Everything had been stopped for months and I could not accept it," Salvini told the journalist of 'Corriere della Sera' Marco Cremonesi, after meeting with the president of the Republic. The leader of the League points to a plan urged by Giuseppe Conte with the complicity of Berlin, Paris and Brussels to take him out of power. The jurist chosen a year ago as a puppet of an executive directed from behind the scenes by his two vice-presidents has become the number one enemy of the 'Capitano'.

Immigration, security, justice, tax reform, infrastructure ... The differences between the two partners were numerous. The contract signed by both formations last year perfectly defined the powers of each member of the coalition, but it ended up being wet paper. Salvini's media strategy to grab the attention of the electors - Prime Minister Conte came to accuse him of governing his ministry from social networks - and the permanent electoral campaign despite holding an institutional position paid off. The European elections held in May certified the unstoppable rise of the League, which doubled the results of its allies, reversing the balances in the Government.

Salvini was already an expert in electoral comebacks. When in 2013 he became the leader of the then Northern League after the unfortunate fall of the historic founder, Umberto Bossi, dragged by a corruption scandal, he was able to transform a populist and separatist movement with 4% of the votes in a sovereign party who aspired to conquer Rome. Immigrants replaced the southern Italians on the target of the new League, which set aside their sympathies for the Catalan independentistas to ally with the National Front of Marine Le Pen and the Polish and Austrian ultra-rightists, with whom he promoted a sort of international populist to act as a counterweight to Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and the "bureaucrats" of Brussels.

The League has closed ranks around its leader despite the fact that the party's heavyweight unofficially recognizes that Salvini's risky bet arrived at the wrong time. To prevent the loss of consensus anticipated by the latest polls (at least five points in fifteen days) translates into a bleeding of votes, Salvini only has to return to the squares. Yesterday, after Conte accepted Mattarella's commission to form a Government, the leader of the League announced a demonstration in Rome on October 19, more or less on the same dates when Parliament will have to approve complicated budgets that will be a test of fire for the new government.

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  • Italy
  • Matteo Salvini
  • Matteo Renzi
  • Sergio Mattarella

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