Italians Vote in 2 Regions; Salvini Eyes Return to Power
is telling Italians who are voting in two regions to use their ballots to help his anti-migrant party return to national power.
Voting began Sunday morning in Emilia-Romagna, a northern region where
the left-wing has held power for decades, and in Calabria, in the south,
an area Salvini's League party once disparaged as unproductive but
where it now wants to expand a foothold .
Results, expected early Monday, of the voting for governor and regional legislatures could rock Italy's squabbling central government in Rome.
Salvini is demanding an early election to end Premier Giuseppe Conte's
coalition government, whose junior partner is the center-left Democrats.
If the Democratic Party's incumbent governor in Emilia-Romagna loses to
the League's candidate on Sunday, the bickering among Conte's coalition
partners could worsen and jeopardize the nearly 5-month-old
government's survival.
The senior party in Conte's government is the populist 5-Star Movement,
which itself is so plagued by infighting and defections that its
political leader resigned his post last week.
Salvini in a Facebook post urged Italians as they headed to vote Sunday
to "liberate these splendid regions" from the Democrats and "Let's free
the entire country."
Salvini, who in Conte's previous government took a hard line against
immigration, lost his role as deputy premier and interior minister last
year and his right-wing party lost its place in government when he
yanked his support from Conte in a failed bid for an early election that
Salvini had hoped with make him premier.
Conte then formed a new government with the Democrats, who set aside
their deep rivalries with the 5-Stars to replace the League in the
national coalition.
Voters could be forgiven if they had the impression Salvini himself was
running to be governor of Emilia-Romagna. The League leader campaigned
practically daily in the region, especially in the countryside and small
towns, considered ripe for a shift toward the right. With his "Italians
first" mantra, Salvini dashed from rally to rally, sampling local
agricultural products in the region, which is one of Italy's wealthiest
and most productive. He boasted of how, when he was interior minister,
fewer migrants, trafficked by Libya-based smugglers, arrived in Italy
aboard charity rescue boats.
Opinion polls during the campaign indicated the race for governorship was neck-to-neck.
The League's candidate is Lucia Borgonzoni, a League politician who as
undersecretary for culture in Conte's first government distinguished
herself mainly for complaining that the Louvre in Paris was getting too
many loans of Leonardo da Vinci's artworks for an exhibition to mark the
500th anniversary of the Italian Renaissance master's death.
The Democrats' candidate is Gov. Stefano Bonacconi, under whose
leadership the region's reputation for a well-run health care system and
other local services was reinforced.
But Salvini is banking on voters in Emilia-Romagna viewing Sunday's
ballot as a referendum on Conte's government and a chance to boost his
League's fortunes. The right-wing League has consistently scored as
Italy's most popular party nationwide in recent opinion polls.
Conte says the outcome of Sunday's votes won't affect his determination
to continue governing until the next election for Parliament is due in
2023.
Until recent years, the League's profile was as a northern-based
political power, with its leaders depicting the underdeveloped south as a
parasitic drain on taxpayers' money.
But Salvini revamped the image of the League, which had long been called
the Northern League, into a nationwide force with rhetoric that blames
migrants for crime and the European Union for what he says is
infringement on Italy's sovereignty.
His chief ally, the Brothers of Italy, has its roots in neo-fascism and is growing quickly in popularity.
VOA
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