“On 25 September 2022 we won the scudetto. Now we win the Champions League“. In Piazza del Popolo, on the day of the Champions Cup final between Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid, Giorgia Meloni uses a football metaphor to mobilize its base in view of the vote on 8 and 9 June. From the stage of the FdI demonstration, her first and only rally in this electoral campaign, the leader of the Brothers of Italy sounds the charge by talking about a “referendum between two visions” of Europe: on the one hand – the prime minister proclaimed in front of the crowd of militants arriving from all over Italy – an “ideological”, “nihilistic” and “centralist” EU, on the other a “proud” Europe, anchored to its roots. This is the crossroads indicated by Meloni, the absolute protagonist of the event, entitled with the slogan that is accompanying FdI’s race towards the vote, “With Giorgia, Italy changes Europe”.
To the thousands of supporters waving tricolor flags and banners with the party logo (20 thousand present according to the police headquarters; 30 thousand according to the organisers), the tenant of Palazzo Chigi does not hide what is at stake in this electoral round: a “damned important” vote that will be “the turning point for the EU”, claims Meloni. The objective is to build a centre-right government majority “alternative to the left” also in Europe, to “make history”. Also because “with the left we have never governed and we will not govern, neither in Italy nor in Europe”. But everything depends “on you”, says the leader of Via della Scrofa, making an appeal to her followers: “As long as you are there, I am there too”, the eyes of the world “are focused on us” and we must show “what we we are capable.”
The Prime Minister has something for everyone. From the secretary of the Democratic Party Elly Schlein to the leader of the 5 Star Movement Giuseppe Conte, from Nicolas Schmit (socialist candidate to lead the European Commission) to the governor of Campania Vincenzo De Luca, with whom Meloni has been engaged in a verbal duel for months which resulted in the phrase ” I’m that str… from Meloni”, broadcast as a jingle from the loudspeakers in Piazza del Popolo to the delight of “Giorgia” supporters. Meloni asks the leader of the Democratic Party to take a stand after Schmit’s words according to which “I would not be a democratic leader. I publicly ask Elly Schlein if she agrees with these words. Elly, it’s a simple question, don’t run away again this time”, he urges the Prime Minister branding the statements of the PSE ‘Spitzenkandidat’ as “irresponsible” and “delusional”, which risk providing “an alibi for extremists to poison democracy with political hatred”. On the 5 Stars: “They have betrayed all their promises made” and this “is their only coherence… It was a short step from those who wanted to transform Parliament into a glass palace to a consociational party from the First Republic”, it stings Melons.
The dem president of the Campania region is not mentioned but is among the targets of the Fdi leader’s speech. “They are scandalized if a woman defends herself… Does it only apply to me because I am a right-wing woman and he is a left-wing man? Can an insulted woman defend herself or not?“, asks Meloni regarding De Luca’s insult (“str…”), ‘returned’ to Caivano by the Pd governor: “We are used to not lowering our heads and not giving in to bullies and arrogant people. I am a woman and I demand the same respect I give to others. Here is equality, here is female pride, what others no longer know how to defend.”
Meloni takes on Berlusconi tones when he marks the distance between “us”, the people of the Brothers of Italy, and “the anger, the malice of our most bitter adversaries. Promise me that we will never become like them and that our driving force will always be love and not hate.” “We – the head of government is keen to point out – will never give up the square, because it is where we came from. And it will be here that we will return, to the square among the people”. Meloni addresses a caress, or rather “an embrace” to his government allies Antonio Tajani and Matteo Salvini, engaged in their respective electoral campaigns. The majority that supports his executive “is strong and cohesive”, he assures, while the opposition is disunited. “Can you imagine what would have happened if the government had had a clear view? With the contradictions they have, Italy would have risked declaring war on its own…”, he quips.
But mere survival is not his political horizon: “We are not in government thinking about how to stay there, we are here to leave this nation in better conditions than we found it, whatever the cost. It will cost a lot of work, trips, blows low, plots in the shadows. Because the forces of preservation of the status quo who have camped out for decades will do everything to prevent us”, warns the number one of FdI.
The premiership, “mother of all reforms”, is among the themes at the center of Melon’s speechi, who defends the bill strongly supported by his government: “It will give Italians the right to choose who to govern them by. The Left and M5S are making an opposition that they have not reserved for any other government measure, they don’t like the idea that Italians could directly choose the Prime Minister”. The president of Fratelli d’Italia then exalts the Italy’s new “protagonism” on the international scene since its adventure in government began: “We had isolation when the left governed. The era of the ‘Giuseppi’ who changes alliances as the wind blows and of the Cerchiobottista left is over”. Now Italy “will no longer go with the saucer in its hand” to Europe, because “that season is over”.
And as regards the government’s measures, there is no shortage of references to the justice reform, to the Caivano decree, to healthcare, with the announcement of the long-awaited ad hoc decree to reduce waiting lists and make visits and healthcare services possible even for Saturday and Sunday. Speaking about the management of migratory flows, Meloni takes the opportunity to express his solidarity with the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama “slaughtered only because he tried to lend a hand to Italy”. Many parliamentarians present, as well as the head of the FdI organization Giovanni Donzelli. The government ‘delegation’ includes the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio, that of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida, the head of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano and of Sport Andrea Abodi. Also in the square were the President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa (to whom Meloni high-fived backstage) and the head of Fdi membership and sister of the prime minister, Arianna Meloni.
On the sidelines of the demonstration, FdI group leader in the Chamber Tommaso Foti did not comment on the outcome of the vote: “We don’t give numbers”. The Keeper of the Seals Nordio expects “a great success” as in the policies, while Sangiuliano, in defiance of superstition, replies “even more” to those who ask him whether FdI can reach 30% of the votes. The young people of Gioventù Nazionale – who started with a procession from the terrace of the Pincio – and of Atreju will animate the FdI event, exhibiting the hardbacks with the faces of Schlein, Lucia Annunziata, Fabio Fazio and Corrado Formigli with the writing “Also if he/she feels bad about it, write Giorgia”. And in the sunny Roman square also appears the parliamentarian of the League and publisher Antonio Angelucci, who abruptly turns to the reporters when asked the reason for his presence at the rally of a party that is not his: “Screw your f… . your”.
(Of Antonio Atte)
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