Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio
has said a vote by members of his 5-Star Movement (M5S) to
reject the leadership's proposal not to run in two upcoming
regional elections will not affect Premier Giuseppe Conte's
coalition government.
"There won't be any," Di Maio told reports when asked about
the consequences of the vote on the central government after a
dinner with other ministers on Thursday.
The M5S leadership had proposed taking an 'electoral break'
after a long series of defeats in regional votes and the recent
failure of the experiment of running with their centre-left
allies in national government, the Democratic Party (PD), in
Umbria.
But over 70% of M5S members voted to run in elections in
Emilia-Romagna and Calabria in a poll of card-carrying members
on its online platform Rousseau.
The M5S was only founded a decade ago by
comedian-cum-politician Beppe Grillo.
It grew fast by tapping into widespread disaffection with
Italy's ruling class after many years of low or negative growth
and a series of corruption scandals.
Indeed, it was the individual party that won most
parliamentary seats in last year's general election, although it
came up short of winning an overall majority.
So it had to form alliances to become a force of government,
first with the rightwing League party and then, when League
leader Matteo Salvini pulled the plug on Conte's first executive
in August, with the centre-left Democratic Party (PD).
The compromises that come with government and the tie-ups
with the movement's traditional rivals have come at a cost in
terms of support, according to opinion polls, which put the M5S
in third place in the opinion polls, just behind the PD and a
long way from the League.
"We are certainly in a moment of difficulty and I am the
first to admit it, we need to fix some things," Di Maio said
Thursday.
"After 18 months in government and 10 years in the
institutions we need to define a new charter of values, a new
organisation and new objectives and it's normal that you have to
devote all your energies to that goal, or else you don't
succeed."
Lower House Speaker and M5S bigwig Roberto Fico said the
movement "needs an important moment of reflection" regarding its
organization and its identity.
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