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IT HAS BEEN a bruising two months for Italian politics following the collapse of Mario Draghi’s government but this weekend voters will take to the polls to appoint a new political leader.
Draghi, seen as a centrist moderate on the world stage, lost the support of his fragile alliance with an anti-establishment coalition in July.
That saw the economist and academic try twice to resign but would ultimately lead Italy into a general election which will reach its crescendo on Sunday.
Polls are banned in the final two weeks of an Italian election so as not to potentially interfere with the ballot but the last canvas of opinion, on 7 September, showed a five point lead for the far-right party of Fratelli Italia (Brothers of Italy) over the left leaning centrist Democratic Party.
Their meteoric rise has taken many observers by surprise – led by Giorgia Meloni they are seen as the heirs to the fascist politics that led Italy into disaster in World War Two.
Her party had just 4% of the vote in previous years but a concerted campaign of alliances with other far-right leaning organisations has thrust potential Government leadership on the longtime campaigner.
But Meloni has sought to, publicly at least, distance her party from views to those shared by fascist Il Duce Benito Mussolini – just last week she sacked a Sicilian representative for past praise of Hitler.
Meloni is not without controversial views – she has embraced a dogma of “God, fatherland and family” and ticks the boxes of far-right politics.
In firebrand passionate speeches she has railed against gender debates, the LGBTQ community and that old Italian political hot potato of trans-Mediterranean migration.
Her alliance with noted Vladimir Putin fan Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and her former stable of Forza Italia means that she is the favourite to take the prime minister’s post.
Forza Italia is the party of Silvio Berlusconi, with the former prime minister’s waxwork-like visage back in the limelight on Thursday night as he praised Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as an operation to place “decent people” in positions of power in the Slavic country.
Her main challenger is Enrico Letta, a left-leaning supporter of Draghi’s now defunct Government and leader of the Democrat Party. There is also the populist Five Star Movement under Giuseppe Conte, centrist Matteo Renzi of Italia Viva and Carlo Calenda of Azione.
But predictions in the Italian press and from observers suggest that they will be unable to overhaul Fratelli Italia.
Despite the tensions within her alliance, she vowed to govern for five years with a programme that includes low taxes, higher social spending – and strong defence of Italy’s interests on the world stage.
Garbatella
Meloni, 45, is a single mother of one who was born and raised in the Roman working-class area of Garbatella.
By 15-years-old in 1992 she was already politically active having joined the Fronte Della Gioventù, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI).
The history of that party harks back to the days of Mussolini as the organisation was formed by Giorgio Almirante, a minister in the fascist dictator’s government.
It was a difficult time in Italian politics as a series of political scandals, widespread corruption and mafia activity caused the collapse of the post WWII status quo.
She has had electoral success and served as a Minister in Berlusconi’s Government.
When that collapsed she left and formed the Fratelli Italia. Its policies are that classic populist mix of ideological answers but nothing of the substantive solutions.
She is the most likely candidate to become Italy’s first female prime minister if her post-fascist Brothers of Italy party wins the general election.
“Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby! Yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology! Yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death!” Meloni roared in a speech in Spain in June.
Meloni has led a clever campaign but with repeated efforts to reduce the firebrand tag – defending the above speech by saying it was made when she was tired.
Some of the old guard remain, but Meloni is attempting to construct herself instead as a “nationalist conservative”, said Mabel Berezin, an expert on fascist, nationalist and populist movements.
Claims of pro-Europe
While Salvini, a former MEP, is profoundly Eurosceptic Meloni has painted herself as pro European Union with much of her pronouncements on Europe sounding more like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
Fears that a Meloni-led government would copy the violations of rules based principles seen in Hungary or Poland were probably “overblown”, Mabel Berezin, an expert on fascist, nationalist and populist movements from Cornell University told AFP.
The risks may be subtler than that, according to Emma Bonino, who leads the +Europe party.
Abortion became the most divisive campaign issue after Meloni said she wanted to give a choice to women unsure about terminating pregnancies.
“We won’t touch the abortion law. We just want (women) to know there are other options,” she said.
Meloni is likely to keep her word on not criminalising abortion, said Bonino, who did time in jail in the 1970s for her fight to legalise it.
But she fears Meloni will instead “push for the law to be ignored”, exacerbating an existing problem — difficulties in getting hold of abortion pills or finding gynaecologists willing to perform terminations.
“There are entire regions where… the gynaecologists are all conscientious objectors” who can opt out of performing the operation, Bonino said — referring in particular to the Marche region in central Italy, which is governed by Brothers of Italy.
Laura Boldrini, one of Italy’s most high-profile female politicians, said she did not think Meloni in charge “would mean women’s lives improve”.
“Meloni has never been about affirming women’s rights, about valuing women or breaking down prejudices against them,” she said this week.
Michela Murgia, a writer and political activist, said Meloni was a “violent creature… who has learned to speak in a reassuring way” so that “positions previously considered extremist now appear good sense”.
Italy would do well, she said, to remember the Meloni speech in Spain, “who seems possessed” and would “bring the same violence to her political rule”.
Russia and Italy
Meloni has aligned herself heavily to the alliance with Salvini and Berlusconi and it could result in her reaching the top office.
There seems to be little appetite in Rome to question Salvini’s lust for Putin and Berlusconi’s full-blooded defence of the Ukraine invasion.
Salvini has been highly critical of the sanctions, saying they are harming Europe and Italy more than Moscow.
But the Russians have made a late intervention on Thursday, with the Russian embassy in Italy tweeting photos of almost all the main party leaders with President Vladimir Putin.
“From the recent history of relations between Russia and Italy. We have some memories,” the embassy wrote, at the end of a campaign where the Ukraine war and Italy’s ties with Moscow have taken centre stage.
The only major party leader not included in the photos was Meloni.
One photo showed Putin and former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi leaning towards each other, while another portrayed Putin shaking hands with a smiling Enrico Letta, leader of the centre-left Democratic Party.
Another showed Putin standing between anti-immigration League leader Matteo Salvini – a long-standing Putin admirer – former premier Giuseppe Conte, now head of the populist Five Star Movement, and ex-Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s current foreign minister.
The last photo showed Putin smiling while shaking hands with former prime minister Matteo Renzi, now leading a centrist party.
Italy’s current government led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi has been strongly supportive of Western sanctions against Moscow over the war in Ukraine.
Meloni has backed the measures, and the sending of weapons to Kyiv, but is fighting the election as part of a right-wing alliance alongside Salvini and Berlusconi.
New system
Italy has transformed its political voting system with the alliance needing a lead in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
The new rules mean parliament has been reduced in scale by a third with less deputies and senators.
Italy has a hybrid voting system – 35/36% of members are elected on a first-past-the-post result and then the rest elected by proportional representation.
Whatever happens on Sunday the likelihood of a shock victory for the more reasonable voices associated with Enrico Letta is unlikely.
The firebrand tone and passion of Meloni is the most probable result and she will, in all likelihood, return triumphant for a rally on Monday evening in the stunning, historic surrounds of Rome’s Piazza del Popolo.
With reporting from © – AFP 2022
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Ursula won’t be happy!
@Declan Edward: She needs to respect the will of the people! Liberals seem to have a problem with that these days.
@Celtic Eagle: name one place in the EU where the election of any party hasn’t been accepted, just one..
@Terry Brophy: They haven’t really accepted Hungary.
@Terry Brophy: can’t..full of shite
@Billybutcher: So that’s your answer to his question. Very intelligent.
@Alan Wright: They absolutely accepted Hungary, Hungary on being accepted decided to disregard the the ethos and norms of the EU despite knowing them prior to application. You are raising two very very different things, I suspect you know that
@Celtic Eagle: Just like Trump accepted the results? how Bolsenaro (1) in Brazil has been talking in preparation for upcoming elections or some disinformation by Italian right supporters about the ‘rigged election’ in italy the other day (2)?
After Trump it seems to be the mantra of the right to claim if they win it’s democracy and if they lose it’s rigged. But carry on with the projection. The internet and the journal.ie comment sections specifically are full of it anyway so whatever.
1. https://brazilian.report/cartoons/2022/07/21/bolsonaro-takes-his-election-fraud-red-herring-global/
2. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/20/misleading-claims-about-rigged-postal-votes-appear-before-italian-elections
Meloni has had the good luck/judgment not to have been in government recently. As M5S and Lega have demonstrated, it’s easy to make populist promises of simple solutions to complex problems but when you have actual responsibility for delivery, popularity can quickly fall away.
@Terry McClatchey: Like a certain populist party here.
@Tim Quigley: Fine Gael ?
The rise of the far right is and has been driven by the centrists and their policies. The social climate they have created has fosterd the uneducated clawhammers who make up the far right population and their policies have radicalised large swathes of them. Why? For profit.
@Black Iron Tarkus: “Everyone with a different opinion to me is uneducated “
@G man: Not what I said but is sounds like your trying to defend the far right? Are you?
And yes, I absolutely consider the racist bigoted far right movement as uneducated.
@Black Iron Tarkus: anything right of centrist is not far right.
@Black Iron Tarkus: try using less buzz words and you will be taken seriously.
@Black Iron Tarkus: gross and growing economic inequality is a fertile ground for political extremism. A lean to the far right or to the populist is often an act of desperation by voters when they feel like things are going in a negative direction and they are not wrong on that point!
It’s just unfortunate that the solution that they grasp for leads to Trump, Borris, Orban, Bolsenaro etc. etc. etc. who invariably make the situation worse. I hope this lady does not follow the same path as the others listed above but I wont hold my breath. She seems to have the same basic formula, blame the foreigners for all problems, tacitly support racism or bigotry, the bureaucrats in Europe are working against us and don’t worry, we have all the answers and we will make great again!
@Bob Rock: *make Italy great again
@G man: Exactly, if you don’t want your country being swamped by migrants or the woke cancer permeating our society you’re instantly far right.
@Christopher Byrne: lol… Clearly people who use woke as a pejorative are far right bigots, outing themselves. Thank you.
@Eric Foley: Nice try Eric. No, I’m far from far righ. I have equal contempt for the far left wokists. Just because someone has a different opinion to you does not make them a nazi
Berlusconi, who is leading one of the three parties in the right wing coalition, stated in an interview that Putin wasn’t at fault for the conflict in Ukraine, as he only tried to replace the Ukrainian government with ‘decent people’ through an invasion he thought would only take a few days, but that he met unexpectedly stiff resistance. It seems Italy are prepared to elect knowingly corrupt, anti-democratic and anti-sovereign populists, just because actually addressing problems such as the chronic borrowing is unpopular.
@Joe Vlogs: its more complex than that. The right to many people are the only ones explicitly talking about the problem of migrants coming into Italy from North Africa. This is a really big issue in Italy and unfortunately it is being left to the lunatic far right to assuage the economic and cultural concerns that many of the population share on this point. Whatever the right is saying, it’s resonating and whether we like it or not it is a big reason why they will be getting into power.
@Bob Rock: The same will happen here if we continue with our open door policy
@Bob Rock: It’s an inconvienant truth
@Joe Vlogs: and we don’t elect corrupt lefties here come on. Like when I type lefties the journals toxic meter goes crazy
Unfortunately the right seems going to take over
@Giovanni Casermaggio: thats great news
Stop calling them far right. What about the far left von der lying saying we have tools to deal with them. So if u vote democraticly u will be punished for following the right by the far left extremists in the EU Parliament. The EU is going to break if the far left keeps up it anti democracy anti right authoritarian agenda. It sick how these people think that they control us the people and silence anyone who doesn’t fit the left EU agenda. We EU there is a right wing wave coming. Finally the right on common sense away for the lunatics left that have had free regin for to long and literally lost the plot and went to the extreme polices. People are the power not the people in power
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