(Bloomberg) -- Italy’s pugnacious populist allies, Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, are confronting each other head-on in regional elections, which will test their relative strength after eight months of coalition government.

Although Sunday’s contest in the mountainous Abruzzo region in central Italy involves 1.2 million voters, Deputy Premiers Salvini of the rightist League and Di Maio of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement campaigned heavily there, amid tensions within the government.

The two populists, who have been quarreling over issues from migration to security and an Alpine rail link project, put on a show of unity Saturday. They shared the stage at a meeting of former stakeholders in two liquidated Veneto banks to slam the Bank of Italy and Consob, the financial market regulator, for alleged lax supervision.

The harmony of the brotherly display will soon evaporate, however, with results of the Abruzzo vote due overnight, and the deputy premiers returning to their constant tussling ahead of a European Parliament vote in May.

Early Elections

Amid speculation on possible early elections this year, Salvini has insisted that the populist alliance will last for the full five-year legislative term. The League leader last week rejected yet another appeal from conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi to ditch Five Star and return to the center-right’s embrace at the national level.

On the campaign trail in Abruzzo, Salvini stressed the need to spend public funds not on immigrants but on hospitals and other services, while Di Maio pledged better schools, health services and transport networks.

With Five Star declining in national opinion polls, its candidate Sara Marcozzi is battling to stay ahead in the region after Five Star scored 39.8 percent in Abruzzo in the March general elections, ahead of the center-right bloc with 35.9 percent. Marco Marsilio, a Rome senator for Brothers of Italy, leads the center-right group for the regional vote.

The populists’ wrangling and electioneering dismays much of the business sector, which wants a focus on economic growth after Italian industrial production fell for a fourth straight month in a sign the recession that started late last year may persist.

“If in 2019 the economy is slowing down, it’s time to launch new measures to return to growth in 2020,” Carlo Messina, chief executive officer of bank Intesa Sanpaolo SpA told newspaper Corriere della Sera on Sunday.

Messina called for a reduction in Italy’s debt mountain and “betting on infrastructure and constructions, starting with all the building sites possible: ports, hospitals, schools, roads.”

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