Five Star Movement

The Italians had another Election in 2013. 25% voted Five Star. It looks like a protest vote by people fed up with corruption, incompetence et cetera. But then another 29% voted for Silvio Berlusconi, a vote for corruption? Perhaps it is all a bit more complicated. At all events there is no overall majority. Gwynne Dyer does not approve; could it be a sense of humour failure? Albeit M5S is run by Beppe Grillo, a comedian who went into politics.

Five Star Movement ex Wiki
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The Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) is an Italian political party launched by Beppe Grillo, a popular activist, comedian and blogger, and Gianroberto Casaleggio on 4 October 2009.[5][6][7] The party is populist,[8][9][10] ecologist,[11] and partially Eurosceptic.[12][13] It also advocates direct democracy[14][15] and free access to the Internet,[16] and condemns corruption.

The "five stars" in the name is a reference to five issues championed by the movement: public water, sustainable mobility, development, connectivity, and environmentalism.

Manifesto

The Five Star Movement's manifesto is publicly available and its main points are[17], among others:

Some of these points were copied by other Italian parties[18] after they saw the Five Star Movement's remarkable success among the electorate.........

History

2013 general election

On 29 October 2012, Grillo announced the guidelines for standing as party candidates in the 2013 general election.[32][33] For the first time in Italy, the candidates were chosen by party members through an online primary between 3 and 6 December.[34].........

On 22 February 2013, a large crowd of 800,000 people attended the last meeting of Beppe Grillo before the election, in Piazza San Giovanni in Rome.[36] In the election, M5S won 25.5% of the vote for the Chamber of Deputies, more than any other single party. The Democratic Party won 25.4% (but had a higher percentage with its coalition partners).[37][38]

Electoral results

Italian Parliament

Chamber of Deputies
Election year # of
overall votes		  % of
overall vote		 # of
overall seats won		 # of seats won
for citizens abroad		 ±
2013 8,689,168 (#1) 25.55
109 / 630
1 / 12
 –
Senate
Election year # of
overall votes		  % of
overall vote		 # of
overall seats won		 ±
2013 7,285,648 (#2) 23.79
54 / 315
 –

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It is all good fun from a distance.

MoVimento 5 Stelle logo.png

 

Beppe Grillo ex Wiki
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After graduation Grillo became a comedian by chance, improvising a monologue in an audition. Two weeks later he was discovered and launched by Italian TV presenter Pippo Baudo. He subsequently participated in the variety show Secondo Voi for two years (1977–78). Later, in 1979, he participated in Luna Park by Enzo Trapani, and in Fantastico.

In the 1980s his success rose further, thanks to shows like Te la do o l'America (1982, 4 episodes) and Te lo do io il Brasile (1984, six episodes). In these shows, he narrated his experiences of his visits to the United States and Brazil, with anecdotes and witticisms about the culture, lifestyle, and beauty of these places.

As a result, his popularity grew more and more, and he became the protagonist of another show developed especially for him, called Grillometro (Grillometer). In 1986, he was the star of prize-winning advertisements for a brand of yogurt.

Soon after this, his performances began to be characterized by an increasing level of political satire, often expressed in such a direct way that he quickly offended a lot of Italian politicians. In 1987 during the Saturday night TV show Fantastico 7, he attacked the Italian Socialist Party and its leader Bettino Craxi, then Italy's Prime Minister, on the occasion of his visit in the People's Republic of China. The joke was:

A member of the Italian Socialist Party asked Craxi: "If the Chinese are all socialists, whom do they steal from"?

The joke hinted at the totalitarianism of the PRC, but even more to the widespread corruption for which the Italian Socialist Party was known. As a consequence, Grillo was effectively and silently banished from publicly owned television[citation needed]; yet, he was vindicated a few years later when the Italian Socialist Party had to be disbanded in a welter of corruption scandals known as Tangentopoli, uncovered by the Mani pulite investigation. Craxi himself died in Tunisia, unable to return to Italy where he would have been jailed for several convictions.[1]

Consequently, from the beginning of the 1990s his appearances on television became rare: according to many people[who?], the reason for this is a silent ostracism by politicians offended by his revelations about their hidden financial activities, frauds and false claims.[citation needed] When one of his shows was finally allowed to be broadcast by RAI, in 1993, it obtained a record share of 16 million viewers.[citation needed] He was later banned definitively from Italian television.[citation needed]

He currently performs in theatres in Italy and abroad, often with outstanding success.[2] Grillo's themes include energy usage, political and corporate corruption, finance, freedom of speech, child labour, globalization, and technology. Recently Grillo started to encourage the use of Wikipedia as the future of knowledge sharing, and generally he is a strong proponent of internet freedom.[3]
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Being hated by Italian politicians and the media make an excellent double.