How and why the center-right is debating expensive bills and Russian shadows
What Meloni, Salvini and Berlusconi say about energy price increases and US reports on Russian funding to foreign parties. Paola Sacchi's note
Final sprint poisoned by the "Russian shadows", with the center-right replying in unison to attacks and insinuations from the left. “Never took foreign money”, Giorgia Meloni replies dryly. Silvio Berlusconi, with his number two Antonio Tajani, attacks on "Soviet funds to the PCI". Something that Matteo Salvini had also said, reiterating the hard line of the complaints: “I have always done and always do the interests of the Italians. I am also on trial for defending national borders ”.
Tomorrow, a hearing by Franco Gabrielli, the Copasir Delegated Security Authority, whose president Adolfo Urso reiterated: "There have been no involvement of Italy so far".
But, in the meantime, in the center-right the divergence on the budget gap for the emergency bills, between Salvini and Meloni ends in the rallies, where it had already peeped out for days. The leader of the League: “If you don't put in 30 billion, now we put triple it in January to pay the redundancies. And 30 billion is a low estimate, there are those who come to speak of 81 billion ”. Then, the lunge: “It's not Salvini's whim. I wonder why Letta and Meloni, with whom I agree on everything, ask to wait for Europe ”. Meloni replies: "For a few days I have been surprised by some statements by Salvini, I am surprised that at times you seem more controversial with me than with your opponents". And again: “I have already explained several times why the deviation is a solution that must be weighed. The price of gas is high because speculation decides to keep it high, if we do not stop speculation with the gas price ceiling and with decoupling, 30 billion will not be enough, but 50, 80, 100 will be needed, money with which we borrow our young people and that we should give away to the big speculators ”.
Therefore, the president of FdI countered: “It is not true that I am waiting for Europe, I ask that Italy even before Europe make the decoupling between the cost of gas and that of electricity”.
Berlusconi, who is also opposed to the deviation, has tones of mediation: "Creating new debt is an extreme measure that we must do everything to avoid". But the former prime minister reiterates the need for urgent government intervention. Berlusconi proposes to "create a fund, guaranteed by the state but financed by the banking system, on which energy distribution companies can draw at zero or near interest rates, as long as they avoid increases in their bills". At the center remains the divergence between Salvini and Meloni. The Lombard Northern League governor Attilio Fontana also intervenes on the dramatic emergency bills, supporting Salvini's request and reminding FdI: “We have been governing the territories for thirty years”. Along the same lines, all the other Northern League governors (Fedriga, Fugatti, Solinas, Tesei, Zaia): “It is a national emergency. Huge public resources and price caps are needed ”.
Open challenge between Lega and Meloni's party described by the media narrative also to the conquest of the North. As the same internal rules of the center-right foresee, the race for the premiership is formally open, as "whoever gets the most votes" will be proposed to lead the new government. And Salvini, who received a medal from the Republic of Armenia for the anniversary of independence, also makes a joke to Confartigianato: “I'll take an hour from Palazzo Chigi to get back to you”. As is normal in an internal political contest, there is no need for the univocal narrative of the mainstream media that for some time there would be only one winner, in short, the result would have already been written.
Naming Meloni and Letta together, it is evident that the leader of the League, in addition to putting pressure for immediate solutions to the serious emergency bills, also tends to overturn the bipolar narrative that describes a center-right led by FdI. Berlusconi to a question from the newspaper La Stampa about whether Meloni is the leader of the center-right, as he was the leader of the PDL, replied: “I don't understand the comparison: the PDL was a single party and therefore had a president. Today we have different parties, each with its own leader ”. The Cav, in turn, claims the role of FI as “the heart of the government, a pro-European and Atlanticist guarantee”. That the final sprint accentuates the differences between the three parties already at the helm of the clear majority of the Regions was moreover to be taken into account.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/centrodestra-scostamento-bilancio-caro-bollette/ on Thu, 15 Sep 2022 05:25:10 +0000.