Matteo Salvini’s League party continues to dominate Italy’s polls while the ruling leftist coalition has the support of just a third of the electorate.
The Swg poll puts Salvini and the League at 34 per cent, making them the would-be largest and only half a percentage point behind the combined support for the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the Democratic Party (PD) which form the current ruling coalition government, Il Giornale reports.
The number also indicates a majority government could be formed by the centre-right coalition of the League, the national-conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI), and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia which, combined, would take 49.9 per cent of the vote.
The positive numbers for Salvini continue despite ongoing attacks against the former interior minister by far-left activists and even members of the Roman Catholic clergy such as Father Alex Zanotelli who said this week that Salvini should be put on trial for his “inhumanity”.
Referring to Salvini’s previous policy of closing Italy’s ports to migrant transport NGOs while he was part of the previous government, the priest labelled Salvini a robot who “does not feel pain for others, especially for those who suffer. [He] has no moral sense.”
The priest may get his wish for a trial in the future, as prosecutors are investigating Salvini over his refusal to allow a migrant transport ship to dock.
The prosecutor’s office of Agrigento announced this week that Salvini could face possible kidnapping charges after he refused to allow a vessel belonging to Spanish NGO Open Arms to dock in Lampedusa in August.
The charges mirror those threatened against Salvini in the Diciotti case last year in which the then-interior minister prevented an Italian coastguard vessel from disembarking migrants.
Prosecutors later dropped those charges after the Five Star Movement, the former coalition partner of Salvini’s League, voted against putting Salvini on trial.