The anti-establishment Five Star Movement is turning the spotlight onto victims of Italy’s banking crises in the run-up to the March 4 general election, symbolically fielding a small businessman who lost his savings against Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.
Angiolino Cirulli was hit when Banca Etruria was rescued by the government of then-Premier Matteo Renzi in 2015. Now he’s running for a constituency in downtown Rome against Renzi’s successor at the head of the center-left government.
Cirulli was “wiped out by the bank-rescue decree,” Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio said as he introduced his party’s candidates in Rome on Monday. “Against the premier who was part of the governments that protected bankers, we field someone who is not protected, a saver.” Gentiloni was foreign minister under Renzi before becoming prime minister in 2016.
Rome-based Banca Popolare dell’Etruria e del Lazio SC was among four lenders rescued by Renzi’s government in November 2015, a restructuring which saw stock and subordinated debt holders wiped out. The banks had about 30 billion euros ($37 billion) of assets between them, according to the Bank of Italy.
“I’m a small entrepreneur, in the craftsmanship sector, and I had the brilliant idea of investing my savings in Banca Etruria,” Cirulli said. “There are so many people, about 500,000 families, who lost a heritage sometimes handed down through generations.”
Five Star is leading the Democratic Party in opinion polls, but a hung parliament is likely as neither is seen winning a parliamentary majority. Di Maio has ruled out forming a coalition with any other party, but says that he would seek outside support on specific measures if he gets a chance to form a government. A center-right coalition led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is the biggest such bloc, but it too is seen falling short of a majority.
Seizing on Italians’ dwindling trust in their banks, Five Star pledged to reimburse savers who have been “cheated” of their money, create a national prosecutors’ office for banking offenses, and also create a public investment bank for small businesses, farmers and families in a 20-point program earlier this month.
“Five Star is targeting people who have suffered from the economic crisis, and especially from bank crises, which are a raw nerve for the Democratic Party,” said Fabio Bordignon, a political sciences professor at the University of Urbino and a specialist on Five Star. “It’s a message for small savers who were the most hit, but also for small entrepreneurs in northern Italy who have traditionally voted for the center-right.”
Keen to distance his movement from the political mainstream, Di Maio stressed that Five Star candidates had all pledged if elected to halve their parliamentary wage and give up their pension, taking a jab at the traditional parties.
“These are people who too often and for too long have been kept on the sidelines of political life because the parties have grabbed everything and have always filled all the jobs with their party men,” Di Maio wrote in a post on Five Star’s blog.
0 comments:
Post a Comment