The League – Matteo Salvini’s party – rose from 14 percent to 36,9 percent, while Fratelli d’Italia of Giorgia Meloni, increased from 6,2 percent to 10,4 percent.
Oggi a Perugia va così!
Non male come inizio di settimana 😎 #ElezioniRegionaliUmbria #elezioniUmbria pic.twitter.com/ByKNT0dj0T— Matteo Salvini (@matteosalvinimi) October 28, 2019
The M5S and the PD, who were fierce rivals until recently, teamed up in a bid to end a long series of victories in regional elections by the League Party, but Donatella Tesei won Sunday’s regional election in Umbria in a landslide victory, claiming 57,55 percent of the vote.
Vincenzo Bianconi, the candidate backed by the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the leftist Democratic Party (PD), got only 37,48 percent.
The two parties had formed a pact at the national level for a new government in August after League leader Matteo Salvini pulled the plug on the first government led by Premier Giuseppe Conte. But the new PD-M5S “experiment” was given a negative score card by Umbrian voters.
Salvini’s League was the driving force of the Umbrian triumph, winning 36,9 percent, compared to 14 percent in the last round of elections in the central region. It was the eighth straight regional election win for the Salvini-led alliance.
Salvini said Conte’s new government will not be around for much longer. “You voted and you chose freedom in the name of 60 million Italians,” Salvini said.
“The days are numbered for Mr Conte, [Foreign Minister and M5S chief Luigi] Di Maio, [Italia Viva leader Matteo] Renzi and [PD head Nicola] Zingaretti, who are momentarily, illegally occupying national government. ”
This election had national significance too. “Conte continues with his arrogant destruction of Umbria. Every day there is a new problem. Those who sow betrayal, harvest betrayal”.
Di Maio said that an election pact between his 5-Star Movement and the PD was now “unfeasible”after the poor result. He added, however, that he wanted Conte’s government to continue. “Umbria was an experiment. The experiment didn’t work,” Di Maio told Sky Tg24.
PD leader Nicola Zingaretti said that the government partners might have to question the executive’s future. Zingaretti said the members of the government coalition must either “feel the same” or “else its existence is useless and it will be better to face the consequences”.
The PD leader said the ruling majority cannot exist just “for fear of Salvini, to avoid the citizens’ vote or wait for the appointments to government agencies just to cling to posts”.
He added: “A vision for the future and a reformist profile of renewal of the government must be relaunched in a hurry. The alliance makes sense only and exclusively if it lives in this common feeling of the political forces that compose it, otherwise it’s useless.”
Ex-premier Renzi told RAI journalist Bruno Vespa: “The defeat was born of an agreement that was a mistake both in the timeframe and the method.”
The Brothers of Italy (FdI) party meanwhile doubled its votes finishing with 10,4 percent in Umbria, almost twice the level of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) on 5,5 percent.
The PD obtained 22,3 percent, down from 35,8 percent last time, while the M5S slumped from 14,6 percent to 7,41 percent.