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Maroni’s Lombardy victory consolidates Northern League’s regional hold

CONGRESSO FEDERALE DELLA LEGA NORD

European and global stock markets whipsawed earlier this week as investors contemplated the notion of gridlock in Italy’s hung parliament following the weekend’s inconclusive vote, and what that means for the eurozone’s future. 
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Predictably enough, European leaders took turns to warn Italy not to veer from its austerity-minded course, and Germany’s hapless social democratic leader Peer Steinbrück even managed to insult Italy’s president by referring to center-right leader Silvio Berlusconi and protest leader and blogger Beppe Grillo ‘clowns.’

But as Italians turned to counting results from regional elections yesterday, there’s another threat looming on the horizon — the specter of separatism.

Even as the autonomist Lega Nord (Northern League) fell from 60 deputies to just 18 in Italy’s lower house, the Camera dei Deputati (House of Deputies), its leader Roberto Maroni (pictured above) won a hard-fought battle for control of Italy’s largest regional government on a slogan of ‘prima il Nord‘ — ‘the North first.’

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That’s because, in addition to the general election, Italians in Lombardy, Lazio and Molise also went to the polls to elect their regional governments as well — it’s as if, on the day of the Canadian federal election, each of Ontario, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island each held their own provincial elections as well.

And there’s no bigger prize than Lombardy, the home of Milan, Italy’s financial, industrial and fashion capital, is Italy’s wealthiest region and its most populous as well — with 10 million people, one in six Italians is a Lombardian.

Maroni’s victory is pivotal because it now gives the Northern League control of the regional governments in Italy’s three largest, wealthiest regions, and Maroni has not hidden his ambitions for a more autonomous northern Italy.  In the past two decades, the Northern League has alternated between supporting greater autonomy and supporting full independence for ‘Pavania,’ its term for northern Italy.

Maroni envisions a Europe of ‘regions,’ and a more federal Italian government that allows northern Italy to keep more of its revenues:

“If I win in Lombardy, a new phase will open: it’s about the path which leads to the creation of the macro-region, and in the same time the first piece of the new Europe of the Regions. It’s an ambitious project, which is not concerning the destiny of Lombardy only, but of the entire North. And it could change history: in Italy’s Northern regions and in Europe.”

That explains, in part, why Maroni was so enthusiastic to leave national politics for local politics — he took over as national leader only last year after long-time Northern League leader Umberto Bossi resigned amid corruption charges.  Maroni has become a familiar face to all Italians over the past two decades — he served as minister of the interior in Berlusconi’s past 1994-95 and 2008-11 governments, and as minister of labor and welfare from 2001-06.

Initially, Maroni wants Lombardy to keep 75% of its total tax revenues, compared to around 66% of the tax revenues it retains currently.

Luca Zaia, the leader of the Liga Veneta (Venetian League), is the regional president of Veneto, where separatist support is strongest, having won the 2010 regional elections in Veneto in a landslide victory, heading a broad center-right coalition.

To the west of Lombardy, in Piedmont, support for the Northern League has traditionally been less enthusiastic — after all, the genesis of Italian unification in the 1860s was born in what was then the kingdom of Piedmont.  Nonetheless, Roberto Cota won control of Piedmont’s government in the 2010 regional elections, leading a center-right coalition that very narrowly ousted the previous center-left Piedmontese government.

With a 2014 referendum on Scotland’s independence from the United Kingdom scheduled and an inevitable showdown between Catalunya’s president Artur Mas and the federal Spanish government over Catalan independence, Maroni’s consolidation of northern Italy under autonomist control means that northern Italy may become the next separatist domino to follow, especially as Italy’s economy continues through a brutal recession and its national government seems unable to take any measures to ameliorate economic decline (or, following this weekend’s election, take any measures at all).

So long after the current crisis recedes with respect to Italy’s national government, Maroni will be around for some time to come to cause headaches for the next Italian prime minister — even more so if it turns out to be a center-left prime minister, such as Pier Luigi Bersani, whose centrosinistra coalition, dominated by Bersani’s Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party), looks to form a stable government.

In some ways, Maroni’s victory is more stunning than the Northern League’s 2010 upset victory in Piedmont. Continue reading Maroni’s Lombardy victory consolidates Northern League’s regional hold

Lombardy looks to post-Formigoni era in toss-up regional elections

Inside Vittorio Emanuel II

Although Italy will hold national elections on February 24 and 25, three regions will hold elections as well — Lombardy, Lazio and Molise.

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None of those will be more important than those in Lombardy (or Lombardia in Italian), the most populous region of Italy and, as home to Milan, Italy’s financial and fashion capital, also its wealthiest region.

Since the fall of the so-called ‘first republic’ with the implosion of Italy’s Christian Democratic party in the early 1990s, the centrodestra (the center-right) has dominated regional politics in Lombardy and, since 1995, Roberto Formigoni has served as Lombardy’s regional president, consistently winning outsized victories against the centrosinistra (the center-left) in 2000, 2005 and most recently, 2010.

Formigoni (pictured below), however, is not running for reelection — he announced the resignation of the regional legislature in October 2012 after his colleague, Domenico Zambetti, was arrested for purchasing votes from the ‘Ndrangheta — the local organized crime operation of Calabria — during the 2010 elections.

As such, ending corruption in the region’s government has taken center-stage in one of Europe’s wealthiest regions.

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Realistically, that means that the centrosinistra has its first real shot at winning regional power in Lombardy, though the centrodestra‘s strength is such that, despite its scandal-plagued woes, it remains very much capable of winning yet another term in power.

It would be nearly the equivalent of the Democrats in the United States taking control of the government of the state of Texas  — a political earthquake, even more of a surprise for the left than in the regional elections in Sicily in October 2012, when Rosario Crocetta became not only the island region’s first leftist president, but also its first openly gay president.

Voters will choose the regional president in a direct vote — the winner and the runner-up, as leader of the opposition, are guaranteed a seat in the 80-member Consiglio Regionale della Lombardia (Regional Council of Lombardy). The remaining 78 members of the Regional Council are selected pursuant to a proportional representation system, tied both to the presidential vote and to a separate party-list vote.

Polls show both the direct presidential vote and the vote for the Regional Council are incredibly tight.

Roberto Maroni, who became the national leader of the Lega Nord (LN, Northern League) in July 2012 after the resignation of longtime leader Umberto Bossi, is running as the candidate of the centrodestra — the Lega Nord‘s local branch in Lombardy is the Lega Lombardia (LL, Lombardy League), and it has been the longtime ally in Lombardy of the conservative Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom) of Silvio Berlusconi.

Maroni (pictured below) has pledged to step down as the leader of the Lega Nord after the regional elections in February, regardless of whether he becomes the next regional president, apparently ending what’s been a long and fairly successful career in national politics.  Most recently, in Berlusconi’s previous government from 2006 to 2008, Maroni served as minister of the interior.

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A victory for Maroni would not only showcase the strength of the centrodestra‘s hold on Lombardy, but would be a huge boost for the Lega Nord, which has advocated more autonomy for the relatively wealthier northeast and center-north of Italy — and, at times, even its complete secession from Italy.

The candidate of the centrosinistra, Umberto Ambrosoli, is the son of Giorgio Ambrosoli, an attorney murdered in 1979 as a result of his investigation into the irregularities of a the Mafia-connected banker, Michele Sindona.

Polls show each candidate winning between 35% and 40% of the vote, often trading leads. Continue reading Lombardy looks to post-Formigoni era in toss-up regional elections