“The V-Day event represented a point of no return,” said Marco Canestrari, a communications consultant for Grillo.
The 5 Star Movement
5 Star Movement was founded in 2009. It achieved its first victory in 2012 when Grillo campaigned relentlessly across Sicily during regional elections. Grillo criticized members of Sicily’s regional assembly’s salary as the country suffered economically. They were compensated nearly 15,000 euros monthly and eligible for a pension after four and a half years in office. This tapped into the anger that was sweeping Italy. Even worse, this wealthy compensation during a time when the Sicilian economy shrunk 5% between 2008 and 2012 with an 18% unemployment rate.
“We should be much angrier than the Greeks and the Spaniards,” he decried at one rally. “They don’t have politicians who steal. We have a political class who is eating the living flesh of this country.”
The group received almost double the number of votes polls predicted.
Unable to Run for Office
Grillo is not eligible to run for office. This is because of a manslaughter conviction stemming from a 1980 car accident. A car he was driving plunged into a ravine and killed three of his passengers (apparently, Italy does not have the Kennedy exception in their country). Yet he is recognized as a political force. As a result, when Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was seeking political support for his leftist agenda in 2014, he sought a meeting with Grillo.
