Matteo Salvini has established Lega Nord as the main right-wing opposition. Demotix/Cosimo Consoli. All rights reserved.As many had foreseen, the results of last Sunday’s regional elections in Italy appear to indicate a period of renewed, accentuated and totally irrational turmoil, perhaps even terminating with yet another Government crisis and the call for early elections.
Thanks to extremely complex electoral laws and the ease with which alliances and coalitions are created and broken, as is usual in Italy all sides claim victory, and it is not easy to perceive reality through the smokescreen of triumphant statements.
At times, on the surface, the victory claims appear plausible: the ruling Democratic Party, led by the Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, has, after all, succeeded in securing five out of the seven contested regions. Silvio Berlusconi, generally considered a spent force in Italian politics, can boast of the fact that his party’s candidate won the elections in Liguria - traditionally a stronghold of the Left - while Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement has retained its position as Italy’s second largest political force.
