Beppe Grillo of Italy's Five Star Movement
IT SEEMS of late that Italian politics is a matter of which major party can tear itself to pieces first. Matteo Renzi, the prime minister and leader of the centre-left Democratic party (PD), and Silvio Berlusconi, who heads the centre-right Forza Italia, both face simmering revolts by dissident factions. But for self-destructive vigour neither group has been able to match Italy’s second-biggest political force, the web-based Five Star Movement (M5S).
On December 7th, the mayor of Parma, Federico Pizzarotti, whose election in 2012 was the Movement’s first real breakthrough, made what looked suspiciously like a bid for the leadership. He hosted a meeting in the city of more than 200 M5S dissidents, including members of parliament. Most protested against the high-handed ways of its co-founders: Beppe Grillo (pictured), a former comedian, and his internet guru, Gianroberto Casaleggio. One disaffected lawmaker even suggested removing Mr Grillo's name from the movement’s campaign symbol.
At the 2013 general election, the M5S won a quarter of the national vote. Since Mr Grillo refuses to ally with any of the mainstream parties, the movement was forced to join an uneasy coalition between the far left and far right. Ever since, the M5S has been steadily losing, or ditching, support in parliament. By the end of November, 15 of the 54 senators and 5 of the 109 deputies elected for the movement last year had either left the M5S or been thrown out.
The latest round of internal hostilities began on November 27th, when Mr Grillo decided on another purge. Writing for the blog that is the movement’s official headquarters (it has no physical central premises), he called an online vote to decide on the removal of two critical lawmakers for allegedly failing to give an account of their expenses. They heatedly deny the claim.
Mr Grillo’s move encapsulated the central paradox of the M5S: it is simultaneously the most and least democratic of Italy’s political movements. In theory, everything from the choice of election candidates to the removal of elected representatives is decided online by the party rank-and-file. In practice, what Mr Grillo and Mr Casaleggio say goes, and neither was chosen by anyone. In this instance, Mr Grillo ignored a rule that the removal of a lawmaker can be put to an online vote only once it is approved by his or her fellow-parliamentarians. And, as on previous occasions, there was no independent scrutiny of the ballot, which was organised by Mr Casaleggio’s company.
The removal of the two deputies led to an unprecedented display of dissatisfaction. A party of M5S activists marched on Mr Grillo’s seaside home in Tuscany where they demanded, and secured, a meeting. The experience seems to have rattled the former comic. Soon after, he announced a broadening of the movement’s leadership, saying he was “pretty tired” and needed the support of a five-strong directorate. In a blog posted after the meeting in Parma, he said it could be expanded to “ten, twenty, thirty, forty”.
What is striking amid all this turmoil is that the M5S has not lost more popular support. It performed miserably in regional elections last month, polling 13% in Emilia-Romagna and only 5% in Calabria. But in both regions the abstention rate was exceptionally high; the M5S, like other protest movements, draws a large proportion of its support from those who otherwise would not vote at all. Opinion polls still give Mr Grillo’s movement almost a fifth of the national vote.
The shaggy-haired comic can still rouse crowds with his attacks on the graft and ineptitude of Italy’s traditional parties, his offer of a referendum on membership of the euro and his promise of direct, web-based democracy. For as long as Italy’s economy continues to flounder and its mainstream parties lurch from one corruption scandal to another, his appeal can be expected to endure.