“It is incredible that the extreme right-wingers are the reference”

It is difficult to understand why the Italians would have wanted the continuity of Draghi and at the same time bet on a nationalist coalition. The answer lies precisely in the parties, where everyone has lost their identity force and in a climate in which the Italians consider that it has been difficult to digest the [próxima] Draghi’s departure due to the incompetence of all the formations that supported him; Brothers of Italy (HDI) has been an escape option.

The leader of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, is the new prime minister of the country and the first woman to hold this position. The Roman leader has been the main protagonist of it since the departure of her predecessor mario draghi. All the lights have pointed to her in recent weeks as the clear favorite to govern the third largest economy in the European Union.

The first projection, based on a proportion of the actual votes cast, for the upper house is ready. They give Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy the 24.6% of the voteswith the center-left Democratic Party the second party with the 19.4%. The Five Star Movement ranks third, with a 16.5%. But, crucially for Meloni, his Liga and Forza Italia partners get 8.5% and 8% respectively. Which gives you the most you need.

“I voted for Giorgia Meloni because of the rest of the leaders not one convinces me”, he admits Luciana, 42 years old, a bakery worker in the Roman neighborhood of Trastevere: “They have promised a lot in this electoral campaign, but they already had their chance to fulfill their programs, when they were in government.” And she adds: “Meloni, however, has never been in an Executive since he founded Brothers of Italy (HDI)”, a formation that saw the light for the first time a decade ago and that has never been a partner of any Government in Italy.

[Giorgia Meloni, la nueva líder italiana, protagonista en las urnas y en las redes sociales por un vídeo viral]

There are two factors that, at street level, are beneficial, in fact, for Meloni’s future: on the one hand, his party does not have a political “past” within an Italian government in which it has not been able to keep its promises; and on the other, the leader of the Brothers of Italy (HDI) has been in politics all her life, as if to seem familiar enough to Italiansgiven that they have been seeing it on the public scene for more than a decade when, together with Silvio Berlusconi, she was at the time the youngest minister in the history of republican Italy.

The importance of Meloni’s electoral boom will not only have repercussions between the right and the left, but also in the internal leadership within the conservatives: “Meloni, in my opinion, has much more strength, right now, compared to Salvini because he latest It has already lost its moment of maximum popularity.“, Explain Marco, 54-year-old taxi driver, with his vehicle running at the height of Plaza Venecia; referring to when the leader of the League, in August 2019, caused a government crisis to take advantage of his 34% in the polls, to unsuccessfully take over the country’s Executive.

At that moment, when the humanitarian ship Open Arms caught the attention of half of Europe for remaining adrift less than 1 kilometer from the coasts of Lampedusa without entering the port due to the refusal of Salvini, then Minister of the Interior; the leader of the League could not imagine that two historic rivals, the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement (M5E) and the socialist Democratic Party (PD) they would have parked their differences to prevent the boss lawyer came to preside over the Palazzo Chigi.

Today that union between the M5E and the PD would be unthinkable, at least for now, since the M5E, led today by Giuseppe Contewas the one that this summer caused the fall of the Executive of the still prime minister, mario draghi; fact that Enrico Letta’s PD is not capable of forgiving the crickets. “What is the use of voting for anyone on the left, if the strongest parties, PD and M5E, assure that they would never ally themselves?”, he admits. Gianni, 48 years oldfrom a kiosk near St. Peter’s Basilica: “If I don’t like the right in general and the left is split, that’s why I stay home”says Gianni, confessing that he has always been a faithful left-wing voter.

The Italian left, in fact, is conspicuous by its fragmentation due precisely to the fall of Mario Draghi last July: “No party is worth a penny,” says Francesca, the owner of a laundry in the Prati neighborhood, very close to the Vatican. “If they have managed to cause the resignation of the most respected Italian at the international level, it is a clear example that all parties only look at their electoral interests, regardless of the fate of Italy. It doesn’t surprise me at all that people vote for Meloni, the only one that has not been part, like the rest of the formations, of Mario Draghi’s Government of national unity”.

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At a time when the eyes of Europe are on Italy, it is very striking, at street level, how transalpines continue to appreciate the figure of Draghi as man of institutionswhose beginning and end of his Executive has to do with the inability of the Italian parties, as a whole, to be active builders of the political life of the country: “You just have to see how Draghi has been killed”, is a common phrase in the last eight weeks that have separated his resignation from this election weekend. Paradoxically, the element technocrat of Mario Draghi as an expert economist and the lack of leadership of the Italian parties, have elevated the former president of the European Central Bank (ECB) to the category of statesman.

“It is incredible, whether in the government or in the opposition, that the moderate Italian right has disappeared and that the extreme right-wingers are the reference in Italy”, explains Davide, from his bookstore near Via del Corso. This point, the one commented by Davide, is key to the future of the country and of Europe. The idea that in the boot-shaped country the vast majority of conservatives in Parliament are nationalists shows that something is changing: “We must not forget that he was a founding member of the European Union”, comments Davide, as he finishes placing some of his books.