The program of the center-right camp in Italy is nothing more than a list of bullet points. If you want to know what Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini in particular are planning, you have to listen to them carefully.
For Giorgia Meloni, leader of the radical right-wing Fratelli d’Italia party, sport is the way for young Italians into the future. The state should support sporting activities to promote a healthy lifestyle, according to the joint election manifesto of the centre-right parties. Meloni, who was Minister for Youth and Sport under then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from 2008 to 2011, went a step further in a video. The sporting activities should also help young people to free themselves from “deviations”. Iceland, which once had a major drug and alcohol problem among youth, has shown that this approach works.
The day after the video, her party tweeted a list of “deviations”: drug, alcohol, nicotine and gambling addictions, eating disorders, self-harm, bullying, baby gangs and “hikikomori” – a Japanese term denoting the social self-isolation of describes people. The public reaction was outraged. “Eating disorders are not deviances,” it said, among other things. The “Brothers of Italy” deleted the tweet.
A few days later, Matteo Salvini, leader of the national-populist Lega, announced in a radio interview that he considered Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s family policy “the best in Europe.” “And I’m not saying that because it’s Orbán. If there was one in France, I would use it as an example.” What Salvini is particularly enthusiastic about is that the tax burden for mothers in Hungary falls as the number of children increases. “With four children, she no longer pays any taxes for the rest of her life.”
The print media in particular are following this debate, which has turned into a heated confrontation between the two camps. Italians as a whole don’t seem too interested in it, though. Many are still on vacation and have switched off from politics.
But that’s a pity, because unlike the narrow 15-point program of the centre-right alliance, in which the right-wing parties have long been in the majority, Meloni and Salvini have made announcements these days that give a deeper insight into the intentions of this camp enable it should form the next government.
On the one hand, there is Meloni’s announcement that the European “Next Generation EU” fund will be redesigned — or to get more money from it, given the consequences of the Ukraine war, inflation, and energy costs. On the other hand, Salvini’s recent statement that the sanctions against Russia must be reconsidered, as they seem to have done more harm to the West than to Russia.
It may be that many citizens are of the opinion that they do not have the final say on these issues anyway, that the politicians in Rome and Brussels would decide over their heads anyway. But it would have to be different when it comes to privacy, education and family, where many things could change.
For example, there is a statement from Meloni dated June 13th. On that day, she was a guest at an election rally for the far-right Spanish party Vox. Her speech inspired those present. Others got chills down their spines while watching the video. At the end of her performance, Meloni proclaimed: “Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobbies. Yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology. Yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death. Yes to the universality of the cross, no to violence of Islamism!” She earned thunderous applause.
After the previous government of Prime Minister Mario Draghi fell, Meloni tried to distance himself a little from this performance. So she said she wouldn’t express herself that way anymore and she apologized to the LGGT community. But her remorse was not really convincing, her speech in Spain was too passionate.
Meloni’s chances of becoming head of government are still more than good. That would be an absolute novelty for Italy. There has never been a female prime minister. Only two women managed to become president of the Chamber of Deputies, only one became chairwoman of the Senate: Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati from the Berlusconi party Forza Italia currently holds the second highest office after the head of state. As the only woman at the head of a party, Meloni is already an exception in Italy.
A group of feminists who published an appeal saying that a head of government would be a unique opportunity says: “Let’s unite, no matter which political camp we belong to, because what’s good for a woman is also good for her Children, good for everyone”. The Italian journalist and author Natalia Aspesi contradicted this in the daily newspaper “La Repubblica”: “I don’t think that being a woman is more important than your political vision,” she remarked. Although she has the greatest respect for Meloni’s political career, which she owes only to herself: “But I could never have anything to do with her.” Aspesi points to the center-right coalition’s program, which uses the word “woman” only once, and the party’s name, Fratelli d’Italia, Brothers of Italy. There is no trace of the sisters here.
But even this debate has met with little public interest. The specific concern many women have is that a centre-right government could tighten abortion laws or even, as recently in the United States, abolish them.
Meloni and Salvini vehemently deny this intention. They want to implement the existing law much more, “to give women who decide to have an abortion for financial reasons a helping hand so that they can think about it,” emphasizes Salvini.
The law may remain, but it would not be easy to abolish it anyway. However, there are ways to circumvent it. It is already not easy in some regions to get an abortion. In Italy, 65 percent of doctors refuse to abort.
Where things could go under Prime Minister Meloni can also be seen in the Marche region. In 2020, a national guideline was passed that provides for the “morning-after pill” to be handed out in counseling centers. However, the guideline is not binding for the regions. The brands, governed by a Fratelli politician since 2020, have not implemented them. The decision was justified by the fact that too few children are born in the Marche.
“Dio, patria e famiglia” (God, fatherland and family) is the credo of the right-wing parties. The term “Credo” can also be found on the Lega’s election posters, where it stands for faith in the religious sense. The Italian bishops’ conference was not happy about it. But religious allusions with rosary beads and images of the Virgin Mary are part of Salvini’s campaign tactics. In the event of a right-wing election victory on September 25, the direction is clear: it would go back in time.
(This article was first published on Saturday, August 27, 2022.)
