By Gavin Jones, Angelo Amante and Giuseppe Fonte
ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s 5-Star Movement, once a prototype for successful populist and anti-establishment parties around Europe, is at a crossroads. Does it fully embrace the political mainstream, or revert to being an outsider?
With support ebbing, its fate could shape Italian politics for years to come, and the battle lines over its future have been drawn.
When the head of state asked former European Central Bank head Mario Draghi on Feb. 2 to try to form a government, and so end Italy’s political stalemate, 5-Star’s leadership immediately ruled out supporting him.
But its founder, 72-year-old former comedian Beppe Grillo, had other ideas. Four days later, he rushed from his home in Genoa for a crisis meeting in Rome with about 30 of 5-Star’s top lawmakers.
At the encounter in a conference room in the capital’s labyrinthine Chamber of Deputies, he made clear 5-Star’s initial decision should be reversed, according to a lawmaker who was…
— to www.usnews.com
