Italian Comedy Or Chaos?

Italian comedian Beppe Grillo draws huge crowds from Milan to Sicily, but the political powers-that-be aren’t laughing. Neither, likely, are overseas firms with business interests in the country such as Live Nation.

Instead, they’re being forced to make room for Grillo and his populist, anti-establishment Five Star Movement party, which won a quarter of the votes in last month’s general election.

Grillo is an unlikely leader of the movement, which appears to have grown exponentially in the last three years because of anti-austerity angst and longstanding distrust of governmental corruption.  But he’s become a firebrand giving voice to popular anger, with more than a little political performance art thrown in.

Grillo has referred to former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as “the psycho dwarf” and Democratic Party leader Luigi Bersani as “a dead man walking,” according to the New York Times. To show opposition to a costly bridge over the Straits of Messina, which separates Sicily from Italy’s “toe,” he swam the span in a wetsuit to show it wasn’t necessary.

Grillo told the Times that among his party’s goals are to develop a consensus platform and set out legislative goals by May, including a so-called “citizenship salary” –

a type of unemployment insurance for recession-wracked Italians. Other priorities include cutting waste, corruption and rampant political spending, withdrawing Italian forces from Afghanistan, capping state pensions and overturning tax amnesties, according to the Times.

Five Star Movement members, known as “Grillini,” won 180 seats in Italy’s lower house and will soon learn about Roman realpolitik – especially since they are adamant about not allying with other Italian parties in any kind of coalition, as is typical.

Live Nation and other concert promoters operating in southern Europe have lamented the region’s slow recovery from the recession and cited economic difficulties behind slumping business there. No doubt, they are watching the Five Star Movement’s effect on the Italian economy.

Some observers have expressed fear that Italy could slip back into the center of the euro crisis. Grillo has called for a national referendum to decide whether Italy should remain in the euro zone, according to the Times. Others worry that whatever gains have recently been made could easily be reversed in the always volatile Italian political sphere.

Grillo blows off those worries, claiming that markets would respond positively “if we work with transparency and serenely, if we are honest and abolish conflicts of interest, and pass laws against criminality, and if we support small and medium business and transform Italy into a community,” he told the Times.

But others see Grillo’s wish list and wish he’d get off of his rose-colored unicorn now that his movement is in government.

“The time has come for Grillo to decide whether he is the pied piper of a protest movement that is an end to itself, or take on the institutional responsibilities for which he asked citizens for a mandate,” Sicilian president Rosario Crocetta told the Times. “He has to show voters whether he was elected to help the country, or lead it into chaos.”