Seismic (political) event in Italy.

progosk — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 16:27:42 -0800

There's been quite the political earthquake in Italy this weekend: the latest national elections have up-ended all expectations, with Silvio Berlusconi's populist right bouncing back to a photo-finish against the forecasted favourite center-left coalition, headed by Pier Luigi Bersani. But it's neither of their results that will cause the real aftershocks - those are the sole honour (and, now, onus) of the most meteoric of political entities Europe has ever witnessed: former comic Beppe Grillo's 5-Star MoVement, formally founded just three years ago, have crowned their national electoral debut by earning over 25% of the popular vote, becoming Italy's leading political force. Run without any public funding, and organised via the web (where their parliamentary candidates were nominated and chosen amongst virtual unknowns), the M5S decided not to appear on any television programme during the electoral campaign, communicating only via their website, forums, webTV, social networks, and their piazza-filling Tsunami Tour. Their political programme is a colourful cocktail of popular measures and proposals; should the hung houses fail to lead to a viable government, nevertheless this fresh contingent of activists (more than 100 deputati and likely 60 senatori) will be instrumental to the basic, fundamental tasks the new parliament necessarily faces: to elect heads of both houses and a new president of the Republic, and to rewrite the law by which the next (and probably very imminent) elections are to be held.

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Seismic (political) event in Italy.

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