M5S members vote on Salvini immunity

(ANSA) - Rome, February 18 - 5-Star Movement (M5S) members on Monday started online consultations to decide whether M5S lawmakers on a Senate panel should vote to lift League leader and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini's parliamentary immunity to face kidnapping charges over migrants held on board the Diciotti coast guard ship in a standoff with the EU last August.
    Magistrates in the Sicilian city of Catania have requested authorization from parliament to proceed against Salvini, who is also deputy premier.
    Salvini has said the case should not be allowed to proceed as he was doing his job as minister.
    The M5S is the League's senior partner in Premier Giuseppe Conte's coalition government.
    The movement appears split on whether to vote on the immunity panel for or against allowing the kidnapping charges against their ally Salvini to proceed.
    "I can guarantee that the government will not collapse," Salvini said.
    "I don't fear the court of the people".
    Salvini also said that "we're all in the same boat" referring to Conte, fellow Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio, the M5S leader, and Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli, also of the M5S, who wrote in statements to the panel that the interior minister was implementing the policy of the whole government.
    Di Maio also said the government would go ahead no matter what the result of the vote.
    "The government will go on. I have made a commitment to the Italian people and I intend to carry it out," he said.
    Sources said the result of the vote would be known at about nine thirty on Monday evening.
    The chair of the immunity panel, centre-right Forza Italia (FI) Senator Maurizio Gasparri, said Monday the vote would start on the immunity committee at about half past one on Tuesday afternoon.
    He said it would be an open vote and the result would be in about two hours afterwards.
    Salvini said he is "not asking for favours or help from anyone" in the vote.
    "If, to defend the borders of my country, the safety of Italians, to defend the national interest, it brings me and will bring me other charges and other investigations, I'm very ready to face them," Salvini said.
    Salvini has also threatened to take legal action if reports of a possible deal within the government over the Turin-Lyon TAV high-speed rail line and the Diciotti cases continue.
    "I'll sue the next person who talks about that," League leader Salvini said during a visit to the central city of Terni last week. Salvini says the project should go ahead but the M5S are opposed to it.
    Italy's centre-left and centre-right opposition parties, meanwhile, accused the M5S Senators of ducking their responsibilities by delegating their decision to the party base.