Five Star Movement ex Wiki
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The Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) is an Italian political party launched by Beppe Grillo, a popular activist, comedian and blogger, and Gianroberto Casaleggio on 4 October 2009.[5][6][7] The party is populist,[8][9][10] ecologist,[11] and partially Eurosceptic.[12][13] It also advocates direct democracy[14][15] and free access to the Internet,[16] and condemns corruption.The "five stars" in the name is a reference to five issues championed by the movement: public water, sustainable mobility, development, connectivity, and environmentalism.
Manifesto
The Five Star Movement's manifesto is publicly available and its main points are[17], among others:
- Abolition of the provinces
- Abolition of electoral refunds
- Amalgamation of municipalities under 5,000 residents
- Compulsory teaching of and examinations on the Constitution for all public representatives
- Two term limit for each public representatives
- Abolition of privileges for public representatives (for example: pension after only two years)
- Prohibit parliamentarians from working in other professions during their terms
- Salary of parliamentarians aligned to the average salary
- Prevention of overlapping of offices for MPs (for example, one could not be both a mayor and an MP)
- Ineligibility of convicted criminals for public office
- Direct participation in any public meeting by citizens via the web
- Introduction of a true class action
- Abrogative and propositive Referendum without quorum
Some of these points were copied by other Italian parties[18] after they saw the Five Star Movement's remarkable success among the electorate.........
History
2013 general election
On 29 October 2012, Grillo announced the guidelines for standing as party candidates in the 2013 general election.[32][33] For the first time in Italy, the candidates were chosen by party members through an online primary between 3 and 6 December.[34].........
On 22 February 2013, a large crowd of 800,000 people attended the last meeting of Beppe Grillo before the election, in Piazza San Giovanni in Rome.[36] In the election, M5S won 25.5% of the vote for the Chamber of Deputies, more than any other single party. The Democratic Party won 25.4% (but had a higher percentage with its coalition partners).[37][38]
Electoral results
Italian Parliament
Chamber of Deputies Election year # of
overall votes% of
overall vote# of
overall seats won# of seats won
for citizens abroad± 2013 8,689,168 (#1) 25.55 109 / 630 1 / 12–
Senate Election year # of
overall votes% of
overall vote# of
overall seats won± 2013 7,285,648 (#2) 23.79 54 / 315– UNQUOTE
It is all good fun from a distance.
Beppe Grillo ex Wiki
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After graduation Grillo became a comedian by chance, improvising a monologue in an audition. Two weeks later he was discovered and launched by Italian TV presenter Pippo Baudo. He subsequently participated in the variety show Secondo Voi for two years (1977–78). Later, in 1979, he participated in Luna Park by Enzo Trapani, and in Fantastico.In the 1980s his success rose further, thanks to shows like Te la do o l'America (1982, 4 episodes) and Te lo do io il Brasile (1984, six episodes). In these shows, he narrated his experiences of his visits to the United States and Brazil, with anecdotes and witticisms about the culture, lifestyle, and beauty of these places.
As a result, his popularity grew more and more, and he became the protagonist of another show developed especially for him, called Grillometro (Grillometer). In 1986, he was the star of prize-winning advertisements for a brand of yogurt.
Soon after this, his performances began to be characterized by an increasing level of political satire, often expressed in such a direct way that he quickly offended a lot of Italian politicians. In 1987 during the Saturday night TV show Fantastico 7, he attacked the Italian Socialist Party and its leader Bettino Craxi, then Italy's Prime Minister, on the occasion of his visit in the People's Republic of China. The joke was:
A member of the Italian Socialist Party asked Craxi: "If the Chinese are all socialists, whom do they steal from"?
The joke hinted at the totalitarianism of the PRC, but even more to the widespread corruption for which the Italian Socialist Party was known. As a consequence, Grillo was effectively and silently banished from publicly owned television[citation needed]; yet, he was vindicated a few years later when the Italian Socialist Party had to be disbanded in a welter of corruption scandals known as Tangentopoli, uncovered by the Mani pulite investigation. Craxi himself died in Tunisia, unable to return to Italy where he would have been jailed for several convictions.[1]
Consequently, from the beginning of the 1990s his appearances on television became rare: according to many people[who?], the reason for this is a silent ostracism by politicians offended by his revelations about their hidden financial activities, frauds and false claims.[citation needed] When one of his shows was finally allowed to be broadcast by RAI, in 1993, it obtained a record share of 16 million viewers.[citation needed] He was later banned definitively from Italian television.[citation needed]
He currently performs in theatres in Italy and abroad, often with outstanding success.[2] Grillo's themes include energy usage, political and corporate corruption, finance, freedom of speech, child labour, globalization, and technology. Recently Grillo started to encourage the use of Wikipedia as the future of knowledge sharing, and generally he is a strong proponent of internet freedom.[3]
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Being hated by Italian politicians and the media make an excellent double.