The distribution of senior positions in Parliament and in the Government causes the first friction between the parties of the conservative bloc led by the Prime Minister ‘in pectore’, Giorgia Meloni
After the broad victory of the conservative bloc in the general elections on September 25, the new legislature began this Thursday in Italy with the election as the new president of the Senate of Ignazio La Russa, one of the founders of Fratelli d’Italia ( FdI, Brothers of Italy), together with Giorgia Meloni, who is called to lead the new Government in Rome. However, before taking the reins of power he will have to finish negotiating the distribution of the key positions of the next Executive with his partners, Matteo Salvini’s League and Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi’s party. It will not be an easy task.
That there is still much to clarify between the three political forces was made clear in the result obtained by La Russa in the Upper House. He was elected thanks to the fact that he obtained some unexpected votes from the opposition, probably from the centrist bloc, since he did not obtain the support of 16 senators from Forza Italia, who opted for abstention as an element of pressure on Meloni in the negotiations to form a government. .
Although from outside the doors the leaders of the three parties assure that there are no great differences between them, it is not being easy for them to agree to divide up the Ministries. Most of them will be occupied by members of the FdI, which won 24% in the elections, but neither Salvini nor Berlusconi are resigned to the fact that their political forces, which each held 8%, will be mere troupes in the future Cabinet.
Ignazio La Russa, this Thursday in the Senate. /
“Thanks to those who have voted for me. And also to those who have not,” La Russa said sarcastically when the result of the motion became known. This parliamentarian with a hunting voice is a veteran of Italian politics who already served as vice-president of the Senate in the previous legislature. On one of the last occasions in which he had to preside over a session, he had no qualms about reading ‘La Gazzetta dello Sport’, the main sports newspaper in the country, while the senators intervened.
A bouquet of flowers
Minister of Defense during the last Government of Silvio Berlusconi (2008-2011), La Russa reaches the most important institutional position in Italy after that of the President of the Republic after having been a member of the neo-fascist MSI party during his youth, founded by the nostalgic of Benito Mussolini after World War II.
It was striking to see him this Thursday giving a bouquet of flowers to life senator Liliana Segre, a nonagenarian who survived the barbarism of the racial laws promoted by the ‘Duce’; even more so with the fresh memory of the scene starring La Russa’s brother, Romano, who is a regional councilor in Lombardy and who recently gave the Nazi salute during a funeral. The new president of the Senate also does not hide his admiration for that historical period and has numerous figures representing Mussolini in his house. Meloni, who throughout the campaign has tried to obscure the neo-fascist origin of his formation, celebrated his election by defining him as a “patriot”.
After the three unsuccessful votes this Thursday, it is expected that this Friday the proclamation of the president of the Chamber of Deputies will take place, a position that could fall to a leader of the League.
Berlusconi returns to the Senate nine years later
Silvio Berlusconi returns to the Senate, from where he was expelled in 2013 after being convicted of tax evasion. The leader of Forza Italia, one of the parties that is part of the conservative coalition together with Fratelli d’Italia (FdI, Brothers of Italy) and the League, is reluctant to retire from politics, although his 86 years weigh him down and he had to be helped by some assistants to walk through the corridors of the Upper House. At this start of the new legislature, Berlusconi starred in one of the images of the day for the discussion he had in the classroom with the new president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, one of the heavyweights of FdI, Giorgia Meloni’s party.
The tycoon ended his talk with La Russa with a “vaffanculo” that was recorded by television cameras. His reaction could be due to how difficult the negotiations are proving to be within the conservative bloc to share out the key positions of the next Executive. Berlusconi has been pressing for days for Licia Ronzulli, one of the leaders he most esteems in his party, to occupy a weighty Ministry, but it seems that he has run into Meloni’s ‘no’. “It is not right, because vetoes should not be put in place,” she commented as she left the Senate.
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