A new grassroots movement called 'sardines' is fighting against Italy's rightwing strongman Matteo Salvini across the nation after a spectacular launch in Bologna last week.
Former interior minister Salvini pulled the plug on the first government of Premier Giuseppe Conte in August hoping to cash in on soaring opinion polls fuelled by his tough anti-migrant and security policy positions.
That government was backed by an alliance between Salvini's anti-migrant Euroskeptic League party and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S). Salvini brought down the government citing alleged M5S inaction and asked for "full powers" from the Italian people in a snap vote.
But the move backfired as the M5S agreed to team up with its long-time foe, the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), in a second Conte-led government.
Salvini's poll ratings suffered after his blunder but he has since surged again on the back of stiff opposition to the M5S-PD coalition, which is also supported by ex-premier and former PD leader Matteo Renzi's new centrist Italia Viva (IV) party, and the small leftwing Free and Equal (LeU) party.
Salvini has prospered by claiming the new government will reverse his ban on NGO run migrant ships and allegedly "flood" Italy with migrants as happened in 2016-17.
He has also depicted the 2020 budget bill as "full of taxes", despite government denials.
But his stances have buoyed the League and it led the centre-right alliance featuring ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI) party and Giorgia Meloni's rightist nationalist Brothers of Italy (FdI) party to a crushing victory in Umbria regional elections last month.
Now Salvini is hoping to repeat the success in another former leftwing stronghold, Emilia Romagna, which goes to the vote on January 26.
Salvini kicked off his Emilia Romagna campaign in Bologna last Thursday night, vowing to "free" the region from the leftwing parties he says have mismanaged it in recent years.
But his flagship kick-off rally in Bologna's Paladozza was overshadowed by the birth of the 'sardines," who managed to bring out over 15,000 people to a nearby Bologna square, saying they were "packed in like sardines".
Now the sardine say they have been inundated with requests for similar anti-Salvini events, after a another successful one in Modena at the weekend.
They have had requests from cities all over Italy including Salerno near Naples.
Salvini tried to shrug off the threat from the new movement on Tuesday, quipping "I prefer cats to sardines"..
Sardine leaders said Tuesday they had "40 piazzas" across Italy ready to hoist their anti-Salvini protests, ranging from Reggio Emilia to Rome and Sorrento and Bari in the south.
Their new Facebook page already has 45,000 members.
In Rome there are two sardine movements who are organising a flash mob in the Testaccio district Saturday and a rally elsewhere in the capital on Friday.
"We are not anti-politics and we tell people to back leftwing parties," said sardine organiser Mattia Santori.
PD leader Nicola Zingaretti has praised the new movement and said "they really are on to something".
But there has already been a strong backlash in the populist press and from rightist haters on the Web.
Salvini added: "I like these kids because they give value and importance to all my appearances. On the next few dates I'm going to go and say hello to them and thanks them because they provide added value. I prefer cats to sardines because they eat them when they're hungry." The movement is primarily made up of young people, but older ones are now flocking to it too.
"I'ma a Neapolitan sardine," said a 67-year-old pensioner as she held up a placard in the southern city on Tuesday.
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