Elections this Sunday in Italy will give victory to far-right politician Giorgia Meloni – rejecting the fascist label but identifying with Mussolini’s heirs, according to exit polls
For the first time since WWII, Italy’s next leader must come from the far right.
Giorgia Meloni, the far-right leader of the Italian Brotherhood party (Fratelli d’Italy), Italy won the election, according to exit polls, and is on track to become the country’s first female prime minister.
If the exit data is confirmed, Meloni is expected to receive between 22% and 26% of the vote, ahead of his closest rival, centre-left Enrico Letta. Data are from research conducted by the Rai Institute.
Several recent polls have given a dominant clue to the right-wing coalition of which Meloni is a part – parties in the group together are expected to receive 41-45% of the vote. This would give the three parties both control of elected assemblies and the possibility of forming a government.
It’s up to President Sergio Mattarella to choose the next prime minister, but he’s likely to choose the winning coalition.
The centre-left, taking 25.5-29.5 percent of the vote, was far behind. The Italian Ministry of the Interior said turnout was strikingly low, at 64.7%. Voting levels were particularly low in the southern regions, including Sicily.
The elections were held after the coalition government led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi collapsed.
Who is Giorgia Meloni?
Founded in 2012, Meloni’s legend has its political roots in the Italian Social Movement (MSI), which rose from the ashes of Mussolini’s fascism.
The party maintains the logo of the post-war far-right parties: the tricolor flame, often interpreted as the fire burning in Mussolini’s tomb.
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But the fascist label is something Giorgia Meloni vehemently rejects. In a recent video, she insisted she left ideology behind by speaking English, Spanish, and French.
However, II. History is part of the problem in a country that went through a different process from Germany’s denazification after World War II and allowed fascist parties to reform.
“Giorgia Meloni doesn’t want to abandon the symbol because she can’t escape her identity; this is her youth,” says Gianluca Passarelli, professor of political science at Sapienza University in Rome.
“His party is not fascist,” he explains. “Fascism means seizing power and destroying the system. It cannot and cannot be. But there are wings in the party that are affiliated with the neo-fascist movement. It has always played in the middle.”
Giorgia Meloni’s youth was actually anchored in the far right, but from humble beginnings it was something that was key to her image as a public woman.
Born in Rome, he was just 1 year old when his father, Francesco, left the family and moved to the Canary Islands. Francesco was on the left, and his mother, Anna, on the right, leading to speculation that his political path was partly motivated by a desire to take revenge on his father.
The family moved to Garbatella, a working-class neighborhood in southern Rome that has traditionally been a stronghold of the left. But there, at the age of 15, he joined the Youth Front, the youth wing of the neo-fascist MSI, and later became president of the student wing of the movement’s successor, the National Alliance.
In the 2021 book, I am GiorgiaHe states that he is not a fascist, but identified with Mussolini’s heirs: “I took the stick of 70 years of history”.
Unlike his right-wing allies, Russia doesn’t have time for Vladimir Putin, and many right-wing voters are pro-NATO and Ukraine, albeit indifferent to Western sanctions.
In addition to the tax cuts, his alliance wants to renegotiate the European Union’s massive Covid-19 recovery plan and have the Italian president elected by popular vote. He will need a two-thirds majority in parliament to change the constitution.
Adopting the old controversial slogan of “God, Fatherland and Family”, he has campaigned against LGBT rights for a Libyan naval blockade to prevent migrant boats from reaching Europe and has repeatedly warned against Muslim immigrants.
It also wants a “different Italian position” regarding the EU’s executive branch. “It doesn’t mean we want to destroy Europe, we want to leave Europe, we want to do crazy things,” he says.
After forming his own party in 2012, he won just 4 percent of the vote in the last election in 2018.
Now, as the only major party outside of Mario Draghi’s national unity coalition government, it has come first in opinion polls and is likely to be elected according to exit polls.
Its right-wing alliance with Silvio Berlusconi and the far-right Liga party of former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini also held a majority.
But while he tries to reassure Italy’s Western allies, for example, by strongly supporting the pro-Ukrainian line of the Draghi government, his rigid conservative social policies worry many.
“Meloni is a danger to the European Union, not to democracy,” says Professor Passarelli, who has placed him next to nationalist leaders in Hungary and France.
“It’s on the same side as Marin Le Pen or Viktor Orban. And he wants a ‘Europe of nations,’ so everyone is basically alone. Italy can be a Trojan Horse for Putin to undermine solidarity, so let him continue to weaken Europe.”
She now asserts her feminine identity, hoping to become Italy’s first female prime minister, but Passarelli believes she does so in a sexist and political way: “The domain of the Italian family is the ‘mother’. The macho figure who controls the kitchen. Meloni uses this wisely because she goes to the very center of our system. “
The 45-year-old will represent the radical political change Italy needs for his allies now seeking victory, given the long-standing economic recession and a society run by top politicians.
main competitor
Enrico Letta, the runner-up of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), suffered a major blow when the pro-European centrist Azione (Action) party withdrew from the left coalition, opposing its other two partners, the Italian Left and the Green Party. Europe.
Enrico Letta, 56, served as prime minister for 10 months from 2013 to 2014 and is no stranger to Italy’s relentless politics. He formed a coalition with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and was eventually overthrown by his rival in his own party, Matteo Renzi.
Letta, a strong supporter of Mario Draghi’s government, said the Italians would punish those who ousted him in July, pointing directly to Giuseppe Conte’s populist Five Star Movement.
Letta found common ground with former Five Star leader Luigi di Maio, who failed to get along with Conte and founded a new centrist party called Compromisso Civico (Impegno Civico).
The main aim of the centre-left leader was to prevent the far-right from seizing power in Italy. It wants to invest in renewable energy and proposes an eight-point training plan under the motto “knowledge is power”.
Does PD support minimum wage? 9 per hour (approximately R$45) to cover around 3 million workers and seeks to facilitate the naturalization of children of immigrants. It also aims to combat anti-LGBT discrimination and legalize same-sex marriage.
New electoral system in Italy
The alliance, which has a majority in both houses of parliament, the House of Representatives and the Senate, will be able to form the government.
The new rules have changed the Parliament, which has shrunk by a third: There will now be 400 deputies in the House instead of 630, and 200 senators in the Senate instead of 315.
Italy has a mixed voting system in which three-eighths (about 36%) of the members are elected by single-member representation. This means that the candidate with the most votes in a given single-candidate district wins the seat, even if it has only a small margin against the nearest opponent.
The remainder are elected by proportional representation and seats are allocated to party lists according to their total national vote share. A quota is also reserved for candidates residing abroad.
possible alliances
Conservative parties. Giorgia Meloni’s party has no experience in government, so it will need the full support of former prime ministers Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini, who are part of Draghi’s government. As the election campaign drew to a close, the three leaders held a joint rally in Rome.
Despite being Italy’s longest-serving prime minister, 85-year-old Berlusconi is running for the Senate for the first time since he was banned in 2013 for tax evasion. The centre-right Forza Italia party is seen as the weakest of the three parties.
Matteo Salvini’s Union is a natural partner for Meloni. As interior minister, he closed migrant camps and prevented NGO boats carrying migrants rescued from the Mediterranean from entering the port.
Five stars. Giuseppe Conte’s anti-establishment party won the 2018 election by about one-third of the vote and although it has about 14% of voting intentions, it is not currently part of any alliance.
They started by sharing power with the far-right League and later moved to the Democratic Party before becoming part of Draghi’s government. Dozens of Five Star deputies left Conte when he opposed sending arms to Ukraine.
Under his leadership, the party’s policies shifted to the left. Five Star’s main banner four years ago was the minimum income for the poorest. Conte no longer minimum wage? 9 o’clock wants to abolish a regional trade tax and make it easier for immigrants’ children to acquire citizenship.
The ideas of Five Stars are not very different from the ideas of centre-left parties.
centrists. Matteo Renzi of Italia Viva and Carlo Calenda of Azione joined forces, aiming to garner votes from both the right and the left to form a “third way” alliance.
If they get more than 10% of the vote, the idea is that they can win the other parties and avoid a Meloni-led government. It’s up to President Sergio Mattarella to choose the next prime minister, but he’s likely to choose the winning coalition.
The centrist choice would be to continue with the pro-European policies of the previous government and even to persuade Mario Draghi to return as prime minister, although the former head of the European Central Bank did not seem very enthusiastic.
Like the centre-right, they want to lift the ban on nuclear power, and like the centre-left, they want to import more liquefied natural gas.
His team includes Mariastella Gelmini and Mara Carfagna, two former Forza Italia ministers who left Berlusconi’s party for their role in overthrowing Draghi’s government.
(with reports by Mark Lowen and Paul Kirby)
This text was originally published at: bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-63003142
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source: Noticias
