Italy’s Non-government: Napolitano Steps In—and out

AS IF Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, did not have enough to worry about, on April 2nd an exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, declared that the head of state had “the Devil behind him”. His comment reinforced Mr Napolitano’s claim a day earlier that the end of his seven-year presidency had become “surreal”. He is facing the veto of a political group that wants to play by entirely new rules: Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S), which took almost a quarter of the vote in February’s election and holds the balance in the upper-house Senate, which any Italian government has to control.Widely seen outside Italy as an anti-austerity protest movement, the M5S is more nuanced. It has gained from resentment at the sacrifices the euro crisis is forcing on Italians; and Mr Grillo has proposed restructuring Italy’s €2 trillion ($ 2.6 trillion) public debt. But otherwise the M5S favours austerity of a kind, preaching an anti-growth doctrine. Mr Grillo says that with M5S Italians would be happier but poorer. The M5S’s main aims are political. It wants to replace Italy’s political parties with web-based, semi-direct democracy. Its lawmakers are bound not to “associate with other parties, coalitions or groups other than for votes on common points”.Since neither the centre-left led by Pier Luigi Bersani nor the main conservative block led by Silvio Berlusconi can form a majority with…

The Economist: Europe