MILAN - Italy's anti-immigrant Northern League party unveiled a list of 15 candidates to stand in March regional elections, as part of its strategy to expand beyond its traditional strongholds.
League leader Matteo Salvini proposed the new electoral list in a meeting in Milan with the party's lawmakers and allies in the populist 5-Star Movement and local conservative and nationalist parties.
Salvini said that he also planned to launch a political movement as a prelude to national elections, in which the League hopes to become the biggest party in Italy.
"The new list is intended to expand the influence of the League throughout Italy," Salvini said after the meeting.
The populist 5-Star Movement, which has seen its popularity steadily fall in recent months, won 25.6 percent of the votes in the 2018 national election, while the League won 18.5 percent.
The League's current leader, also known as "the captain," was tapped by President Sergio Mattarella on Thursday to form a new government after the party won 17.5 percent of the vote.
Mattarella has until November to give the League or its main ally, the 5-Star Movement, another chance to form a government.
The alliance won more than 50 percent of the vote in February elections for the mayoral posts in Rome and Turin, and emerged as the strongest force in Sicily.
The League has been at the forefront of attempts to expel migrants from Italy, and Salvini has said he wants to take part in the French presidential election next spring, when far-right leader Marine Le Pen will face off against centrist Emmanuel Macron.
The League and 5-Star Movement held preliminary talks about forming a coalition government in 2017 but failed to reach an agreement on economic policy.
The League's new electoral list has a total of 75 candidates.
According to the proposed list, the League would not run a joint ticket with the 5-Star Movement in the election, but would encourage supporters to vote for the 5-Star Movement's candidates in local elections.
The League would focus its resources on the regions where it has achieved key results such as Friuli Venezia Giulia and Piedmont, where it came second.
The list includes nine candidates in Friuli Venezia Giulia, which 5-Star narrowly won in the recent elections, together with the League.
The list also includes 28 candidates in Piedmont, another region that the League has won and 5-Star has narrowly lost, according to the proposal.
Other key candidates include former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, former leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League Umberto Bossi and economist Rocco Buttiglione, who headed the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee in the 2000s.
Berlusconi, who has been on trial for tax fraud since 2016, could run for the Senate again but does not want to run for an office he would not win.
Pope Francis has been invited to be the honorary president of the electoral list in Piedmont, sources close to the campaign told Reuters.
The League has a record of using populist stunts to gain votes - including one during the last national election when one of its candidates dressed up as the devil to protest against a proposed immigration bill.
The League leader said that his new electoral list was meant to "open a new chapter" for the party.
Salvini will be in Brussels this week where he is set to meet with European Council President Donald Tusk on Thursday for talks on the European Union.
(Reporting by Alberto Bagnai, Robert Hetzl, Thomas Ades, Domenico Macinadama, Gareth Jones, Reuters News Agency; Editing by John Stonestreet and Richard Balmforth)
#COURT_VITALO : Italy's Supreme Court has ordered the "arrest" of Salvini for disobedience.
Beppe Grillo, the leader of Italy's Five Star Movement, the country's largest opposition party, has denounced the decision to put Salvini under investigation for disobedience to an article of the constitution on Wednesday.
Salvini has been ordered to appear in court on June 1 on accusations of disobedience, according to Il Messaggero. Salvini's right-wing party is accused of forming a government with the populist 5-Star Movement without obtaining an outright majority.
Lawyer Enrico Bracalente, a member of 5-Star and an admirer of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, wrote that it would be necessary to reinterpret Italy's constitution as it currently stands in order for the government to be constitutional, Il Messaggero reported.
In a tweet, Grillo
