The leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, was appointed prime minister of Italy on Friday, becoming the first woman to lead a government in Italy.
Meloni, 45, arrived minutes before the scheduled time, it was 3:30 p.m. in Lisbon, at the official residence of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, ready to form an executive with his coalition partners, Matteo Salvini, of the Liga, also from the far right, and Silvio Berlusconi, from conservative Força Italia, divided ministries and other positions.
It was the second time that Meloni met this Friday with Mattarella, who had summoned her this morning along with her allies for preliminary consultations by the President of the Republic, to whom the coalition proposed the name of the leader of the Brothers of Italy, the most voted party on September 25, with 26 percent.
The new Italian government leader confirmed that the League’s leader and Força Italia’s number two will be deputy prime ministers in the future government, in which they will also hold the Infrastructure and Foreign Affairs portfolios respectively.
Matteo Salvini, of the League, will resume the post of Deputy Prime Minister who was already in the executive branch of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte (2018-2019), who at the time was posing with the Interior Affairs portfolio.
António Tajani, of Força Italia, will also be in charge of Italian diplomacy, despite controversial statements by his party’s leader, three-time prime minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, who this week confirmed his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, forcing Meloni to clarify that his government will be an ally of Europe and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Western Defense Bloc).
However, Berlusconi’s party was left without the Justice portfolio, to which former Judge Carlo Nordio, deputy of the Brothers of Italy (FdI) in the current parliamentary term, had been appointed.
Meloni spoke to the press shortly after presenting Mattarella the already complete list of ministers in the government that he had asked her to form.
The new executive will take office on Saturday morning, as announced by the Quirinal, seat of the presidency of the Republic of Italy.
From troubled youth to leading a government
Born on January 15, 1977 in Rome, the FdI leader had a rough start in life. Her mother Anna had to raise her alone, along with her older sister Arianna, after her father abandoned them and left for the Canary Islands.
His mother knew what was left of the house they lived in to sell and they moved to the working-class neighborhood of Garbatella, where he came into contact with the politics to which he would devote his life.
The FdI leader lives with journalist Andrea Giambruno and their daughter Ginevra.
At the age of 15, Giorgia Meloni decided in 1992 to join the Youth Front, an organization of the former Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist party founded in 1946 by followers of the late dictator Benito Mussolini.
In her youth, Giorgia Meloni was a noted admirer of Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943, in a government that supported Nazi Germany during World War II.
In 1996 he became responsible for the student movement of the National Alliance (AN) party, the new face of the MSI. In a program on the TV channel France 3 he stated: “Mussolini was a good politician, everything he did, he did for Italy”.
During her political career, she was elected Councilor of the Province of Rome in 1998 by the AN, led by Gianfranco Fini, and later, in 2004, Meloni was appointed president of Ação Jovem, the youth wing of the AN, becoming the first female President of a right-wing youth organization.
Her rise was lightning fast and in 2006, at the age of 29, she was elected to the Chamber of Deputies by the AN, where she was vice president until 2008, when she was appointed Minister of Youth in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government. .
In 2012, he founded the Irmãos da Itália, a party considered to be the new heir to the MSI, and kept Sílvio Berlusconi as an ally, including in the League, Matteo Salvini’s party, in the 2013 elections.
In 2014 Giorgia Meloni becomes president of the FdI.
In the year 2016, she unsuccessfully tried to become mayor of Rome, but gained wide popularity by campaigning during her pregnancy. In 2018, it won 4.3% of the vote in the general election and the FdI became the fifth party in the country.
In 2021, the FdI was the only opposition party in the national unity government of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
Giorgia Meloni believes that a Europe based on Christian values is important. It supports the ‘natural family’, is highly critical of gender ideology, opposes what it classifies as the ‘gay lobby’, condemns abortion, wants greater security at Europe’s borders, opposes mass migration and Islamic violence.
The FdI leader is close to European far-right parties, such as Spain’s Vox, and an admirer of Hungary’s president, the ultra-conservative Victor Órban.
On August 10, during the election campaign, Meloni published a video in English, French and Spanish to distance himself from fascism.
“Decades ago, the Italian right relegated fascism to history and unequivocally condemned the deprivation of democracy and the infamous anti-Jewish laws. And, of course, our condemnation of the Nazi regime and communism is also unequivocal,” he declared.
Meloni was tasked today by the president, Sergio Mattarella, to form a government in Italy, the secretary-general of the presidency announced.
The FdI leader took responsibility and became the first woman in the country’s history to be called to the post, and still today presents the composition of her government, which is expected to be held Saturday morning (08:00 GMT) in the Palácio of the Quirinal.
The FdI won 26 percent of the vote in September’s elections.
Matteo Salvini’s League won 8.8% of the vote (up from 13% in 2018), and Forza Italia, owned by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, 8.1% (14% in 2018), according to figures from the Ministry of Interior, quoted by the French agency AFP.
The coalition of these three parties and a smaller formation with less than 01% obtained 43.8% of the vote, which translates into 237 of the 400 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 115 of the 200 seats in the Senate.
Source: DN
