ROME — Italian prime minister in-waiting, Giorgia Meloni, is in a power struggle within her right-wing alliance that threatens to derail her attempts to form a new government.
Trouble flared on Thursday over the appointment of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party colleague, Ignazio La Russa — a collector of fascist memorabilia — as the new speaker of the Italian Senate.
While a majority of lawmakers voted to endorse La Russa, there was one group which notably refused: Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right Forza Italia party. They are meant to be on Meloni’s side.
The standoff calls into question the long-term viability of the electoral alliance that Meloni forged with Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini of the anti-immigration League party.
Meloni’s right-wing bloc took a combined 44 percent of the vote in the election on September 25, enough for a parliamentary majority, but the three leaders have been struggling to agree on the division of key positions in a new administration ever since.
Meloni, leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy, has said she is working to appoint a “high profile” Cabinet, but she has not been willing to fulfil all her partners’ demands.
“The rift that has emerged in the right-wing coalition is certainly a bad start as it suggests they are still far apart in terms of Cabinet composition and there is an element of mistrust,” Wolfango Piccoli of analysts Teneo said. “This is only day one: Things will get a lot harder as they face more challenges and get less popular.”
After a year and a half of stability under Mario Draghi, Italian politics is back in flux at a precarious time for the country’s economy. Meloni will need to assure the president during meetings in the coming days that she can command a majority in parliament to get the mandate to form a government.
One reported bone of contention between Meloni and Berlusconi is his call for a serious Cabinet position for his protégée, Forza Italia Senator and former nurse Licia Ronzulli.
After the leaders failed to reach agreement on Cabinet positions in meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, Berlusconi’s Forza Italia MPs boycotted the Senate vote on La Russa’s position.
Berlusconi said in a statement that it was because of “a strong unease over the vetoes expressed in recent days in the formation of the government.” Berlusconi said he himself voted in a “signal of openness and collaboration” but was then videoed using apparently offensive language during a heated altercation with La Russa.
The election of La Russa to the role of speaker, the second highest office of state after the President, underlined the historic shift in Italian politics with power passing to a far-right government.
In 2018 La Russa displayed his collection of Mussolini busts and colonial era photos from the fascist and colonialist era to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
At the start of the pandemic he joked that a fascist salute was an effective protection against COVID-19, tweeting: “Don’t shake hands with anyone… Use the Roman salute, antivirus and antimicrobial.”
Last month La Russa’s brother, another politician in Meloni’s party, was filmed performing a fascist salute at a funeral. La Russa called it a “serious mistake,” but said he was angry at the “abnormal” reaction by the media to what he called a request by a dead person for a particular “greeting.”
The presence of the eldest member of the Senate, senator for life, Liliana Segre, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, who was presiding over the Senate, gave the event a particular emotional resonance. She used her speech to remind senators of the impending 100th anniversary of Mussolini’s March on Rome, which gave rise to the fascist dictatorship.
Thanking those who voted for him, La Russa tried to strike a conciliatory note, promising to be impartial and paying tribute to left- and right-wing political leaders and activists who died in the 1970s.
