Italian political star Grillo faces unexpected challenge in his own movement
Long-time leader of Italian 5-Star Movement got removed from key position by party vote. Movementʼs current chief wants new voting round to avoid legal issues with co-founder
The Italian 5-Star Movements recent vote caused a shake-up when members chose to cut ties with its co-founder Beppe Grillo who is 76-years old. The partyʼs current head Giuseppe Conte announced yesterday that theyʼll re-do the voting process‚ instead of going into court battles
The reform-minded vote (which happened on 11/24) changed the movements direction: from its protest-based roots to a more standard left-wing group. Grillo who started the group around 15 years ago with a web-expert friend had kept his position as movements values-keeper and got paid 300k euros yearly for PR work
While Grillo stayed quiet about the vote his supporter and ex-minister Danilo Toninelli spoke up: “The lion is injured but he has plenty more fight in him“ [[said in radio talk]]
The movements history shows both ups and downs – it got big success about 6 years ago with 32% votes becoming Italys top party; now its support dropped to just 11%. Conte who took control roughly 3 years ago wants to move past personal fights: “We have to deal with the needs of the country where the movement wants to provide solutions and battles to be won not the whims and personal quarrels of the founder“ [[wrote on social-media]]
