Five Star Movement and social democrats to continue attacks on Italian working class in new governme

[TexasTowelie]

Five Star Movement and social democrats to continue attacks on Italian working class in new government coalition


Italian President Sergio Mattarella formally granted Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte the authority to attempt to form a new government Thursday after the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party (PD) reached an agreement to establish a coalition.

The stock exchanges and financial markets responded with relief. Interest rates for Italian government bonds declined to a record low, while the Milan stock exchange rose by 2.1 percent, reaching its highest level since the beginning of the month. The formation of the government is “from the point of view of investors the best thing that can happen in Italy right now,” remarked a markets analyst from the Commerzbank.

European Union (EU) representatives, together with politicians and media outlets, were also jubilant at the prospect of a new government, which, they claim, will stall the progress of former interior minister and leader of the right-wing extremist Lega, Matteo Salvini.

The official line was first presented by PD General Secretary Nicola Singaretti, who claimed on Wednesday night that the new government would end “this period of hate, horror, scheming, and egoism.” Although the forming of a new government would be “no walk in the park,” it must put a stop to “the shameful behavior … which has violated human rights and damaged the rule of law.”

Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/08/30/ital-a30.html

[Ghost Dog]

1. The PD does have a dubious recent history, and 5-star is above all populist,

although of the left. Perhaps the wsws is overly-pessimistic.

... When the last government led by the media multi-billionaire Berlusconi collapsed as a result of the euro crisis in 2011, the PD refused to call for elections, which they certainly would have won. Instead, they supported the blood, sweat and tears cabinet of former EU Commissioner Mario Monti. The consequence of this was the dramatic rise of the Five Star Movement, which initially posed as anti-establishment before offering a platform to the right-wing extremist Salvini.

Even Salvini’s political “trademark,” his brutal policy towards refugees, was largely adopted from the PD. “His greatest success, the ‘solution’ of the problem of illegal immigration across the central Mediterranean route,” wrote the FAZ, “was essentially inherited by Salvini from his social democratic predecessor Marco Minniti, who two-and-a-half years ago persuaded and paid the government in Tripoli and the tribes aligned with it to capture most African immigrants before they reached the Libyan coast and then detain them in terrible camps.”

Salvini has gleefully exploited the coalition of the Five Star Movement with the PD, which until now they denounced as the embodiment of the establishment. He has called a major demonstration in Rome for October 19 against the “government of Conte-Monti layabouts.” It will be “a day of Italian pride” against “the stealing of democracy.” The newspaper La Repubblica has already drawn a parallel with Mussolini’s march on Rome, which also began in the month of October in 1922 and led to the conquest of power by the fascists

In the final analysis, the political lurch to the right in Italy is part of an international phenomenon. Around the world, the ruling class is responding to mounting social and international tensions by promoting right-wing extremist forces and turning to authoritarian forms of rule to suppress the struggles of the working class...