Salvini's Garbage Gambit Risks Falling Short

(Bloomberg) -- When Italy’s deputy premier Matteo Salvini complains about appalling garbage collection in Rome, the point isn’t public health but personal ambition as he chases what might be his last chance to grab the top job.

The Eternal City has taken center stage in his tussle with ally-turned-rival Luigi Di Maio, his counterpart in the country’s fractious government. Salvini wants to win over Rome for his anti-immigration League party and has lambasted Mayor Virginia Raggi from Di Maio’s Five Star Movement for falling short on everything from catching rats to warding off seagulls and emptying trash cans.

If Salvini can push deeper into Five Star’s base in the south in Sunday’s European Parliament ballot — held on the same day as nearly 4,000 mayoral contests — he could trigger an early general election. But there are now signs he might not do quite as well as he had bragged.

His honeymoon with voters may be starting to sour, and the fall of his ally in Vienna, Heinz-Christian Strache, over an influence-peddling video won’t help.

Salvini was on the back foot, even before Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz ended the coalition with the populist Freedom Party. The Italian strongman suffered his worst defeat in nearly a year in government after Five Star ministers convinced Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to oust a Salvini lieutenant over corruption allegations. The scandal triggered a counter-offensive by Di Maio on political morality.

Salvini has responded to the setback by lashing out at the European Union’s budget rules, saying the country will spend whatever it takes to lower unemployment — appealing to voters but riling markets in the process. In his characteristically brash rhetoric, he has cast the contest as an epic struggle.

“It’s a referendum between life and death, between the past and the future, between a free Europe and an Islamic state based on insecurity and fear,” Salvini, who has turned ships of rescued migrants away from Italian ports, told a rally south of Turin earlier this month.

Salvini has imposed himself as the dominant force in the coalition thanks to a focus on migration and crime as well as a mastery of social media — 3.7 million people follow him on Facebook. His ambition is to expand the League beyond its stronghold in the wealthy north to become the most powerful party in Europe — after coming fourth in Italy in 2014 with only 6% support.

But moderate Italians have become increasingly unsettled by Salvini’s overtures to the far-right, and the country’s dismal economic performance has acted as a brake on his popularity.

At the height of the campaign, Rome was the focus of tensions between Salvini and Di Maio on migration. Salvini attacked Pope Francis’s almsgiver for restoring power to hundreds of homeless people living in an unused building, while Di Maio rallied to the pope’s defense.

In recent days, the power struggle — facilitated by the decline of traditional leftist parties — has become even more personal, with the always-dapper Di Maio, who wore a jacket and tie even at his state school near Naples, making an issue of his rival’s attire.

“In the first six months of the government, Salvini presented himself as someone interested in people’s problems,” Di Maio told Canale 5 television. “Now I don’t recognize him any more. It’s as if he’s taken off his sweatshirt and put on the best suit of the old political class.”

--With assistance from Zoe Schneeweiss.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, ;Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Chris Reiter, Iain Rogers

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