Credit agency Moody’s has said that there is a strong chance of an Italian election and foresees a possible break-up of the populist coalition following May’s European Parliament elections.
The agency claimed there to be “a significant risk of early elections” in a report saying that the coalition partners of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the League may find it increasingly difficult to balance their respective differences going into May’s elections, Italian newspaper Il Giornale reports.
“For the time being, it is not easy to predict what will be the evolution. It is not clear what will happen to the government after the European elections,” a senior vice president of the agency said.
The prediction comes after the Five Stars did poorly in the recent regional election in Abruzzo earlier this month that saw a major victory for the centre-right alliance which includes Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s League, the populist-conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI), and others.
The centre-right coalition dominated the polls winning 48 percent of the vote electing Brothers of Italy candidate Marco Marsilio, as the new governor of the region. The League also saw the most votes of any individual party at 27 percent, while M5S scored third behind the leftist coalition with 20.2 percent.
Other cracks have also formed in the populist alliance including M5S senators who publicly opposed the migration and security decree penned by Salvini and leaked audio between Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in which Conte appeared to advocate for taking in more migrants against Salvini’s closed ports policy.
Since last year’s election, Salvini and the League have seen a stunning rise in the polls and have been in poll position ahead of the Five Stars for months.
A potential election, based on recent polling, shows that Salvini and the centre-right alliance would likely win a snap election but, according to a Demopolis poll, would be close to securing a majority with 45 percent of the vote. In last year’s election, the League managed only 17 percent and the centre-right alliance won 35 percent in total.