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On the populist government crisis in Italy: Salvini wants all the power

A. Rossi, the editor of the Italian Scintilla, wrote about the government crisis in his country for Evrensel Daily: If there is an early election in the autumn, it will turn into a referendum on whether or not to give Salvini full power.

On the populist government crisis in Italy: Salvini wants all the power

A. Rossi

The ultra-reactionary leader of League party, the Minister of Interior Salvini, opened the governmental crisis onAugust. The pretext was the vote in the Parliament on the TAV project (high speed train), in which the 5 Star Movement (5SM), that has a majority stake in the Government, voted in a different way from the League, just to save face from its continuous failures.

It’s a crisis announced for a long time. In 14 months the government 5SM-League was characterized for continuous polemics, quarrels, clashes, offenses, intrigues and stabs to the shoulders, between the two populist parties.

The conflicts on the TAV, the “diversified regional autonomy”, the flat-tax, the election of the new president of UE Commission, manifested the divergence of interests between sectors of bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie of the North and the South of Italy, two regions increasingly distant.

After the European elections, that have certified the turnaround in the balance of power between 5SM and League, it was a common knowledge that Salvini would have disconnected the plug at the first opportunity.

The “business” Lega-Russia - a corruption story that involves Salvini’s collaborators - played a role in the acceleration of the crisis.

But the ruling majority has dissolved essentially for its own internal contradictions. The “yellow-green” coalition was never born; it was only a private pact, exhausted before the ink used to write it dried.

Salvini blew up the government to avoid to assume responsibility of a heavy budget package that is approaching. So he can go to the polls continuing with his social demagogy, chauvinism, xenophobia, the most shameful lies, to buy up the consent of the poorest for the interest of the richest.

We will soon know if there will be early general election in autumn. In this case the election will have a particular character: a sort of referendum on full powers to Salvini, as he himself is asking to establish an authoritarian regime at the service of the more reactionaries and warmongering sectors of the monopolistic capital.

A regime supported by a wide parliamentary majority to adopt quickly measures for the benefit of the profits, to reinforce a racist and police State that Salvini implemented with the crush-freedom “Security decrees”, to bind Italy to the war-chariot of Trump.

The grim leader of the League has today the opportunity to do this, taking advantage of the impotence and the complicity of the 5SM and the intestine struggle of the liberal-reformist Democratic Party. Both these parties hide the class character of the League and don’t want to mobilize the workers against the reactionary danger.

Against this background, if there will be this kind of a referendum on Salvini’s full power, the workers, the unemployed and precarious young people, the oppressed women, the pensioner at minimum level, will give the answer to bar the road to the reactionary project of Salvini, as well as they did three years ago rejecting the reactionary project of Renzi.

But it is also possible that sectors of pro-EU bourgeoisie, with the support of Mattarella, the Republic president, and with the help of top trade union bureaucracy, succeed in putting on an “institutional government” to continue, with the excuse to avoid the increase of the VAT tax, the politics of the austerity. With the consequence to pave the way for a subsequent extreme right government.

In the coming months, political temperature will rise more and more, while the inevitable cooling of the economy will have a deep impact on the Italian situation, that already sees hundreds of unsolved company crisis.

The debacle of Italian imperialism will force the new government, whatever it is, new severe measures against the working class and popular masses, that for their part will be obliged to regain initiative, with local and national demonstration and strikes.

In its struggle against the old and the new bourgeoisie parties, working class has to recover its independence and to mobilize in defense of its own interests, immediate and future, against the capitalistic offensive, the political reaction and the danger of war.

The real strength is the class unity, the only way out of the situation is the struggle for an authentic workers’ government.


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