M5S members approve new Italy coalition after crunch vote

Members of Italy's Five Star Movement on Tuesday overwhelmingly voted in favour of forming a government with the centre-left, pulling the country back from the brink of snap elections.

Party leader Luigi Di Maio said that around 80 percent of M5S members voted 'yes' to backing a M5S-Democratic Party (PD) government led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

"We should be proud of this digital platform... because we offered a different method for creating a government," Di Maio told journalists in Rome.

The vote was carried out on the movement's Rousseau online platform, an exercise in the anti-establishment party's much-vaunted "digital democracy". Nearly 80,000 people voted.

M5S leaders on Tuesday launched an appeal for members to support the coalition which is being thrashed out after far-right leader Matteo Salvini pulled the plug on the previous government.

"This is a delicate moment for the country," M5S said of what Italian media dubbed "Rousseau roulette".

Five years

"For us, a mandate from citizens is a serious matter, it lasts five years, as laid out in the constitution, so that a government programme can be carried out," read the M5S blog.

The M5S joined an ill-fated coalition with Salvini's League 18 months ago, but anti-migrant Salvini hoped for fresh elections that would make him premier when he tried to bring down the government last month.

Instead, M5S is forming a new administration with its former foes from the PD. Conte is due to present the new government programme to President Sergio Mattarella possibly by Wednesday.

Di Maio said on Monday that approving the coalition was an absolute priority.

A negative vote would have spelt the end of talks with the PD and prompted the snap elections sought by Salvini.

Di Maio has been criticised in recent days for procrastinating on the deal, including by M5S co-founder and comic Beppe Grillo.

But on Monday he agreed that he would no longer be deputy prime minister in the new government, provided no PD politician held the position either.

M5S foes have been quick to criticise the Rousseau system, which has previously been slammed as secretive and vulnerable to cyber attacks.

"This is an insult to Italians' institutions, constitution and intelligence," said Mariastella Gelmini of tycoon Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia.

Pulling strings

The platform is managed by Davide Casaleggio, whose father Gianroberto founded the Movement along with Grillo.

Critics say the Casaleggio family has been pulling political strings from behind the scenes from the start.

Former consitutional court judge Sabino Cassese wrote in the Corriere della Sera daily that is was paradoxical for perhaps 60,000 people out of a potential 100,000 to be given the potential power of contradicting the 11 million Italians who voted for M5S in March 2018.

"When will the M5S's political leader stop playing with democracy?" Cassese wrote.

"We are working seriously and with patience to achieve a government that will allow the real change that Italy needs," said PD leader Nicola Zingaretti, adding that he was "confident and optimistic".