Grillo showed his iron grip last year when he expelled two local councillors who had criticised a lack of internal democracy and flouted the party rule not to appear on talk shows with rival politicians from the “old” parties. “The total dependence on Grillo is not sustainable, they will have to create a structure and he will have to allow mini-leaders to emerge or everything will implode,” said Gualmini. They point out that in practice Grillo not only controls the movement but owns it, having obtained the rights to its brand when he founded it with Casaleggio in 2009. Yet his critics say he is more of a despot than a democrat. Grillo and his mostly young followers present themselves as pioneers of a new, more egalitarian type of democracy, based on direct participation rather than delegation and hierarchies. “Grillo was the only one who gave any hope of change,” said Matteo Schiavetti, 22, a student at Rome University. Grillo capitalised on popular despair over recession, unemployment and poverty with a campaign that convinced millions of Italians that he could offer them a break with the past. “Unless the other parties change their leaders and somehow get back in touch with ordinary people he can certainly keep on growing,” said Elisabetta Gualmini, politics professor at Bologna University and a close observer of Grillo’s movement. In one of the best debut performances by any party in Western Europe since World War Two, 5-Star took 26 percent of the vote, outstripping the PD and Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right People of Freedom. They are joint founders of the 5-Star Movement. Casaleggio has been running Grillo’s public activities ever since. The two men met in 2004 and the following year Casaleggio’s company created Grillo’s hugely successful blog. The answer is Casaleggio, and his Milan-based firm Casaleggio Associates whose business is to create websites and web-based marketing campaigns for clients. “Behind Bersani is the PD, I want to know what is behind Grillo.” “A single man in command is not democracy,” said Pier Luigi Bersani after his Democratic Party (PD) was beaten into second place in the vote. Most of the strategy is decided by Gianroberto Casaleggio, an Internet expert who seldom appears in public. Grillo has made all the headlines since the vote, but he is only half the story of his anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. “The left and right will govern together on the ruins they’ve created, it will last a year at most, then our movement will change the world,” Grillo said after his party’s triumphant performance in last week’s election. International media describe Grillo as a comic, which on one level he is, but the man who jointly created and leads the party that in just three years has become the largest in Italy is much more than that.īehind his tirades against the political and business elite is a shrewd mind, a hugely influential alter ego and the desire to win complete power in the euro zone’s third largest economy. Five Star Movement leader and comedian Beppe Grillo speaks during a rally in Rome February 22, 2013.
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