“Now let’s stop with the official documents, I want to defeat Conte on a media level…”. If the clash between Beppe Grillo and Giuseppe Conte for control of the 5 Star Movement were a war, we could define the current one as a stalemate. Yes, because according to what Adnkronos learns from well-informed sources, the guarantor and co-founder of the M5S would have decided to take his foot off the accelerator regarding the legal offensive against the former prime minister and to keep a lower profile, without giving up some stabs via social media.
This change in strategy would be due to several reasons. Of an economic nature, first of all: we are talking about the fee requested from Grillo by the lawyer Pieremilio Sammarco (expenses that the Genoese comedian would have proposed to honor through crowdfunding, a fundraiser) but above all about the more than concrete risk of losing the guaranteed legal shield from the M5S and the 300 thousand euro per year consultancy contract that links Grillo to the Movement. Without neglecting the purely legal reasons: in the opinion requested by the guarantor, in fact, the lawyer Sammarco essentially explained to Grillo that his hopes of challenging a possible vote of the members on the name, M5S symbol and double mandate rule are reduced to little light. But let’s proceed in order and try to reconstruct the last phases of the legal dispute between ‘the High’ and the former prime minister.
Between the end of August and the beginning of September the clash at the top of the M5S flares up and the co-founder of the 5 Star Movement decides that the time has come to move to the courtroom. It is the former mayor of Rome Virginia Raggi, Grillo’s loyalist and main exponent of the internal opposition to Giuseppe Conte, who facilitated the meeting between the comedian and the lawyer Sammarco, owner of the firm in which the Capitoline councilor herself worked in past. The first face-to-face meeting between Grillo and Professor Sammarco took place in Rome on 4 September, in neutral territory: not at the Sammarco studio – located a few steps from Piazza Cavour – but in the Parioli area, away from prying eyes and pens.
The lawyer, who during his professional career has already dealt with cases relating to the use of party symbols, draws up an opinion at Grillo’s request in which he puts in black and white what are the possible ways forward and what, instead, are the insurmountable obstacles in this long war of attrition: on the one hand, Adnkronos learns, Sammarco sees the concrete possibility of showing off the M5S symbol to the association chaired by Conte; on the other hand it makes Grillo understand that preventing members from voting on the “three pillars” (name, symbol and double mandate rule) is very, very difficult, assuming that the procedural process set up by Conte to arrive at the vote after the constituent assembly is linear and free of hitches (and opacities, according to some Grillo loyalists, are not lacking, starting from the question of members entitled to vote).
Sammarco’s objections don’t stop Grillo, on the contrary. The guarantor is determined as never before: “We will act like Highlanders, only one will remain. We have to stop the Wizard of Oz…” the comedian joked with his team. But it is when Sammarco presents the bill of the fee that Grillo begins to be tormented by his first doubts. After having ascertained that the Roman lawyer would not have worked pro-bono, the comedian pulls the idea of crowdfunding out of his hat: basically, a collection on the web to raise the money needed to cover the legal expenses. Sources close to the matter report that Sammarco is not particularly enthusiastic about the idea.
A few days pass and Grillo asks the prof. Sammarco to suspend any legal action against Conte. And perhaps it is no coincidence that, when on 20 September Adnkronos intercepted Sammarco at the entrance to his legal office, the lawyer feared the possibility that the dispute between Conte and Grillo (classified as a “wife-husband dispute”) could be resolved outside the courtrooms. What cooled Grillo’s barricader soul, however, was above all the threat of the suspension of the 300 thousand euro contract and the legal indemnity guaranteed by the M5S. Conte would have sent a very precise message to Grillo, which can be summarized more or less like this: at the first legal action you undertake against me and the Movement, I will cancel the consultancy contract and drop the ‘shield’ which exempts you from paying legal fees for the causes. Without excluding compensation for damages and therefore the payment of arrears. A cold shower for Grillo, who resorts to milder advice without giving up his proverbial polemical attitude.
Via the web, in fact, ‘l’Elevato’ continues to prod Conte. On his blog the guarantor inaugurates the “moaning board” collecting the outbursts of members and militants against the five-star leader; and finally, he posted a photo on social media that portrays him with a long beard, accompanied by the caption “I’m still waiting for Conte’s answers…”. But the skirmishes, assure those who know Grillo well, will certainly not end here.
(by Antonio Atte)
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