Italy’s New Government Survives Key Test, Keeping Far Right at Bay
ROME — Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy won a crucial vote of confidence in the Senate for his new coalition government on Tuesday, paving the way for pledged overhauls to the country’s economy and sectors like research and education.
Lawmakers voted 169 in favor of and 133 against Mr. Conte’s alliance of the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party, along with a smaller left-wing group — a coalition that commands a slim majority in the upper house of Parliament.
Although it held firm on Tuesday, the unlikely alliance is likely to be tested when the two bigger parties, which were at fierce political odds until recently, try to find consensus on contentious issues like large-scale infrastructure projects and spending.
“We must do everything we can to carry out the reforms that are important for the country, in the perspective of a new European legislature,” Mr. Conte said after the daylong debate that preceded the vote. “I am confident that the opposition will give its contribution, because what we build in this legislature will benefit all Italians.”
Mr. Conte singled out education, research, support for agriculture, and small and medium industries — the backbone of the Italian economy — as well as a shift toward a more ecologically sustainable economy as the government’s chief objectives for growth.
As in the lower house, the ambitious agenda of the former opponents prompted a heated debate in the Senate, and opposition lawmakers repeatedly interrupted the prime minister with jeers and chants of “Elections. Elections.”
Nonetheless, the atmosphere in the Senate was far less raucous than it had been on Monday in the lower house, where Mr. Conte won his first confidence vote with 343 votes in favor and 263 against.
Responding to Tuesday’s result, Mr. Conte’s former ally Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right League party, called Sept. 10 a “day of national betrayal” on his Facebook page. On Twitter, he added: “If they think they’ll stop us, they’re wrong: We are going forward as fast as ever and square after square, city after city, region after region, we will win,” he wrote, referring, in part, to coming regional elections in the fall.
Mr. Salvini’s defection from Mr. Conte’s previous coalition government last month set off a political crisis, but the League leader’s subsequent calls for an election were thwarted by the unexpected alliance of Five Star and the Democratic Party.
Critics of the new government say that the strongest bind between the new coalition partners is a shared antipathy toward Mr. Salvini and the League — which became the biggest party in the European elections in Italy last May and still polls strongly nationally — and a mutual aversion toward new elections, which they would be likely to lose.
The antipathy flows both ways. On a popular late night talk show on a state-owned channel, Mr. Salvini said, “Treason doesn’t pay, and time is on our side.” He added that “this is the least popular government in the history of Italy’s Republic.”
According to one survey released on Monday, the League would take 33.4 percent of the vote in the event of a national election, with its hard-right allies, the Brothers of Italy, at 7.2 percent. The Democrats polled at 22.1 percent and Five Star at 21 percent, down significantly from the March 2018 election in which it won 32.2 percent.
Mr. Conte became prime minister in 2018 as a consensus candidate with no party affiliation or government experience. But a year in the post appears to have honed his political skills, and he has deftly managed the crisis that began last month when Mr. Salvini pulled his support from the government to try to force elections.
Instead, Mr. Conte persuaded Five Star, to whom he is close, and the Democratic Party to overcome their mutual dislike to form a coalition. Five Star’s political leader, Luigi Di Maio, was named foreign minister in the new cabinet and will often cross paths with the incoming European Union commissioner for economic affairs, Paolo Gentiloni, who preceded Mr. Conte as prime minister.
Shortly after his nomination in Brussels on Tuesday, Mr. Gentiloni said he intended to focus on kick-starting growth in Europe and on “social and environmental sustainability” in the bloc. He is also expected to take up Rome’s call for a relaxation of European Union fiscal rules that critics say stifle expansion.
Mr. Conte said that Italy would also ask Europe to increase its investments in Africa and intensify cooperation there, a step toward slowing down the flows of immigrants who try to cross the Mediterranean in search of a better life in Europe.
During his 14 months as interior minister, Mr. Salvini solidified his power base through a steady stream of proclamations that often singled out migrants as the biggest threat facing Italy. He was also instrumental in passing a tough security law that was particularly punitive toward nongovernmental rescue ships that operate in the Mediterranean.
Mr. Conte said that the law would remain, but that its sanctions could be relaxed somewhat.
The prime minister said that immigration could not be reduced to a “closed-door or open-door” policy, and that issues like illegal migration, human trafficking and the integration of migrants who are allowed to be in Italy needed to be addressed. He said Italy would also push for changes to the European Union rule that asylum seekers must apply for refugee status in the first member state they enter.
For his part, Mr. Salvini pledged to work hard in opposition. He is scheduled to preside over the League’s annual meeting in the town of Pontida, in the northern region of Lombardy, over the weekend, and has called for supporters to attend a rally in Rome on Oct. 19.
“Get used to these rallies — you are in the minority in the country, and even inside your political parties,” Mr. Salvini said in the Senate, alluding to dissatisfaction over the coalition by some members of its two main parties.
He also charged that the new coalition government had been formed out of “the fear of going to the polls and being sent home.”
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