M5s, Grillo on the hearse: 'The movement is very dead, make your own party'

"Seeing this symbol represented by these people gives me a sense of unease. get another symbol, go ahead and do your own thing. The movement is very dead. but it is compostable. The humus within it is not dead'. And again: 'We are who we were waiting to be. We are. It doesn't end here. Go and vote, otherwise go for mushrooms. I'm not offended, I don't even know you anymore. But try to think that this Movement will have a different and wonderful course, whether you are in it or not'.

"On Tuesday 3 December at 11.03 a.m. log on to my blog, my YouTube channel and my Facebook page. I have a delicate message to announce,' Beppe Grillo announced. And in the video, punctually published on social networks, he is seen driving a hearse: a blatant image of the death of his movement, the one founded together with Gianroberto Casaleggio back in 2009, the one that wanted to revolutionise politics by opening up Parliament 'like a tin can' and bringing ordinary people into the chambers of power, the one that did not compromise and did not play 'games' on alliances 'that not even Christian Democracy'. In short, let Samson die with all the Philistines, and let Giuseppe Conte, who has 'disintegrated the movement in its identity' by transforming it into any 'progressive party', make his own party with his own name and symbol.

Two days after the repetition of the vote of the M5s members that cancelled the role of the Guarantor from the statute, a repetition requested and obtained by Beppe Grillo on the basis of the powers granted to him by the statute still formally in force, the die is cast: the founder has decided to break the deadlock and challenge Giuseppe Conte on the ownership of the symbol. But if it is true that the symbol belongs to Grillo, as established by the 2021 ruling of the Genoa Court of Appeal, which has now become final and was reported by Il Sole 24 Ore on 30 November - 'The name of the 5 Star Movement is combined with a mark registered in the name of Beppe Grillo, the sole holder of the rights to use it,' the judges wrote in the ruling - it is also true that Grillo himself has bound the use of the name and symbol to a confidential contract.

It is a private contract in which the founder undertakes not to promote 'any dispute' regarding the use of his name and symbol in exchange for the indemnity guaranteed by the movement, i.e. the release from the financial consequences of any court cases. Well, the unforeseen twist from Campo Marzio is that Grillo has decided if need be to renounce the indemnity ('the lawsuits against me are now few and far between', he confided to the faithful).

Not only that. That 11.03 a.m. set for the announcement is not accidental, the loyalists point out, but refers to the date 11 March 2022, when the new M5S statute was approved. In the video Grillo did not go into details, but those votes can still be challenged (an appeal can be made within five years), as the lawyer Lorenzo Borrè pointed out in the past few hours. And if a judge were to rule in Grillo's favour, Conte would lapse because his position as president was not provided for in the previous statute. One would therefore be thinking of an ex novo challenge to the votes that brought Conte to the helm of the movement in the summer of 2021, then repeated in March and April 2022 after the famous 'freeze' decided by the Court of Naples following the first appeal won by the lawyer Borrè himself.