Americans have always been drawn to political leaders who come from the world of showbiz – Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger – but this quarter’s crop of international elections has seen the phenomenon spreading.
Italian comedian Giuseppe ‘Beppe’ Grillo came third in Italy’s elections, with his party the Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement or M5S), after his online movement captured the popular imagination.
The outspoken comic – “Italy’s Jiminy Cricket” according to the Financial Times – trained as an accountant, before taking to the stage as a comedian in his 20s. He launched M5S two years ago. Beppe, 64, began criticising the collusion between big business and political parties as part of his stage act, his television career having taken a nose dive when he was banned from state TV for calling the leaders of Italy’s Socialist Party ‘thieves’. Supporters flocked to his shows and he set up a more formal movement via the Internet.
MS5 side steps traditional left and right wing divisions to focus popular concerns. The ‘five stars’ are: public water, sustainable transport, development, connectivity and environmentalism.
On the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, Israel’s Yair Lapid, whose party came second in the recent Israeli elections, is better known for being a journalist and television presenter. The 49-year-old started his journalism career as a correspondent for the Israeli Defence Force’s weekly magazine in the 1980s, before editing a Tel Aviv newspaper and writing columns for the nationals. In 1994, he began hosting a Friday evening talk show, the first of several. He even had a part in the Israeli film Song of the Siren and has written his own plays, dramas and books, including a series that ran on Israel’s Channel 2, called War Room. In 2012, he became chairman of the new centrist Zionist party, Yesh Atid. Lapid is the son of journalist and politician Yosef “Tommy” Lapid.
