Members of the Italian senate and the chamber of deputies who were expelled from the Five Star Movement party for a no confidence vote in the government of Mario Draghi are mulling the creation of a separate parliamentary group, but expect that other parties may try to hinder this process, one of the expelled senators told Sputnik
GENOA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th February, 2021) Members of the Italian senate and the chamber of deputies who were expelled from the Five Star Movement party for a no confidence vote in the government of Mario Draghi are mulling the creation of a separate parliamentary group, but expect that other parties may try to hinder this process, one of the expelled senators told Sputnik.
Last week, M5S acting leader Vito Crimi expelled 15 senators and 21 deputies from the party for not supporting the government led by Draghi, as the M5S vote on its online Rousseau platform prescribed.
"It is clear that parliamentary work, especially opposition work, can be done more efficiently if coordinated within a component of the mixed parliamentary group or as a real autonomous group. That is why, together with some colleagues from the chamber of deputies and the senate, we are working on an alliance that could first take the form of a component within the mixed parliamentary group and then become a real group by itself," senator Mattia Crucioli said.
He noted, however, that it is still early to make any definitive statements in this regard, as the parliamentary regulations are cumbersome, and the last word belongs to a committee for the regulation formed by the members of the existing parties.
"They might find it convenient not to have a real opposition arising, an opposition very different from that represented now by the Brothers of Italy party," Crucioli continued.
Brothers of Italy was the only party that fully refused to support the government of Draghi.
Asked what the motives behind the decision to vote against the party line and against the Draghi government were, Crucioli said that the principles of direct democracy, which the party defended since its formation, have been distorted, and now the vote on the Rousseau platform increasingly has the function of ratifying decisions already taken by the bigwigs of the party.
The question that the registered users who have the right to vote were asked on the Rousseau platform was "Do you agree that the Movement supports a technical-political government that foresees [the establishment of] a super-Ministry of Ecological Transition and that defends the main results achieved by the Movement together with other political forces indicated by the appointed president Mario Draghi?" Many argued it was not neutral and introduced an unnecessary topic of a "super-ministry."
"The question was obviously manipulative, not to mention the fact that the vote was postponed until the most favorable moment for the outcome desired by the leaders of the M5S," Crucioli said.
Over 59 percent of M5S members who voted answered the question affirmatively.
Crucioli refused to support the government, believing that economic measures that Draghi would adopt will not benefit small and medium enterprises, but will play into the hands of big companies in the northern Italy strongly interconnected with the European financial and production chains.
"For small and medium-sized enterprises there will be very little left and this government will adopt a sort of economic Darwinism strategy: the big ones will be helped and the small ones will have to make do or disappear. The Five Star Movement has now embarked on a path of compliance with the system against which it used to fight before, and therefore, I consider it impossible for me to remain in it," Crucioli said.
By now, 13 ex-M5S members of the chamber of deputies have already formed an entity within the mixed parliamentary group called "Alternative exists."
