Matteo Salvini will have to wait. The Italian Senate has postponed to August 20 a solution to the political crisis triggered by the leader of the League (far right) Matteo Salvini. On Tuesday, 13 August, senators rejected any draft motion of censure against the government of Giuseppe Conte.
The interior minister, who blew up the majority formed with the 5-star movement (M5S) on August 8, had called for a vote this week of a resolution of no confidence against the executive, in place for only fourteen months .
Urgently convened in the middle of summer, a majority of senators voted against Matteo Salvini's motion, which for the occasion had reconnected with his old allies of the traditional right, Forza Italia (FI, right) and Frères d'Italie (FdI, post-fascist). At the same time, in another motion, they asked Giuseppe Conte to come to Parliament on 20 August to try to resolve the crisis.
Matteo Salvini is betting that his current popularity rating will allow him, if he returns very quickly to the voters, to win the election and to be able to govern alone.
The right-wing leader wants to go quickly because he fears that the M5S and the Democratic Party (PD, center left) find a way to avoid an advance poll by forming another majority.
Reduction of the number of parliamentarians
Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (2014-2016), still a heavyweight of the Democratic Party, has returned to the forefront, proposing that the M5S join forces behind an "institutional government" and "no tax" (anti-taxes), which would cut drastically in the number of parliamentarians (345 less of a total of 950) and adopt the 2020 budget.
Early elections in the autumn as required by Matteo Salvini since his break with the M5S "would be a disaster" because they would make impossible the adoption of budgetary measures to avoid the rise in VAT, argued Matteo Renzi, when a press conference in the Senate just before the vote. According to him, in this case, the VAT very penalizing for consumers, could "go up to 25%" and "it is certain that Italy will fall into recession".
The ball in the M5S camp
In an unexpected turnaround, Matteo Salvini proposed to his former "friends" of the M5S to vote together to reduce the number of parliamentarians, before returning immediately to the polls. Thursday, the Minister of the Interior had however brutally broken his marriage with the M5S, accusing him of obstructing all his projects, on tax cuts or major infrastructure projects.
The ball is now in the camp of Luigi Di Maio, the head of the M5S, who has maintained the vagueness of his intentions.
By August 20, the game remains very open. The draft PD-M5S alliance on Tuesday could lead to a new, short-term government and technicians to adopt the budget and prepare for new elections, either on a reworked executive, made up of M5S ministers, backed by the PD and other formations. In the absence of a solid majority, elections would become inevitable.
With AFP and Reuters