“The existing political class must be expelled immediately,” he told the New York Times. Hence his refusal to form a coalition. He wants the political system to collapse. From it, he’d construct “something new,” something truly democratic. “We can change everything in the hands of respectable people,” he explained.
But wasn’t it reckless to try to destroy the system? “How can we be accused of destroying something that’s already destroyed?” he asked. “They’ve devoured the country, and now they can’t govern.” He called Berlusconi of the right-leaning PDL a “psycho dwarf” and Pier Luigi Bersani, the top honcho of the left-leaning Democratic Party, “a dead man walking.”
Italy’s political system would collapse, he told the German online magazine Focus. “I give the old parties six months, and then it’s over.” In the subsequent elections, the 5-Star movement could get enough votes to govern—and to clean house.
He also demanded the renegotiation of Italy’s debt. “We’re being crushed, not by the euro, but by our debt.” A government is like a corporation that goes bankrupt. Investors are simply “out of luck.” They took a risk and lost, he said, having earned a degree in accounting. And if the conditions aren’t changed, he added, Italy would leave the euro and return to the Lira....
... The 5-Star movement doesn’t have much of a structure yet, and no experienced MPs—they, like their electorate, come from all walks of life and were picked during the primaries through internet voting. The movement might have trouble bringing down, as Grillo hopes, the political establishment that was designed to survive these kinds of democratic groundswells; it had been able to form governing coalitions before, even when election results were complicated. But alone the fact that the 5-Star movement gives De Gregorio and perhaps others visions of Nuremberg Trials for politicians is a glorious achievement.
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