The parallel lives of Giorgia Meloni today and Bettino Craxi forty years ago
Who knows if and how many surprises Meloni is destined to procure for opponents and friends, and for us journalists, in the continuation of his work at Palazzo Chigi, like Craxi in his time. Damato's Scratches
Partly for how things really stand in a majority solid in numbers but not exactly compact in the depths of the components, partly for how the opponents represent them, forced, trying to make facts, symptoms and so on coincide with the their hopes, Giorgia Meloni is reliving at Palazzo Chigi the days, months and years – it will last, she too will last – of Bettino Craxi between 1983 and 1987.
The political framework, of course, is very different also for actors, extras and the like, but the toughness of the match is the same. Not surprisingly, after all, Craxi soon ended up in the cartoons of Giorgio Forattini on the Republic of Eugenio Scalfari with his boots on his feet and his head down, like Mussolini hanging in Piazzale Loreto, in Milan. And Meloni has already ended up with her head down, too, on some wall in Milan.
There is no Matteotti kidnapped and killed that Meloni can not say boast about but assume "responsibility" in a speech of Mussolini style and content recently quoted by a poor man – to say the least – who was inspired by it at the head of a public company entrusted to him by the new government, and fortunately he resigned even before Meloni herself asked him, but Giuseppe Conte has already had the lackluster idea of attempting to evoke the socialist martyr in the Montecitorio hall by speaking against the Prime Minister and his “bronze face”. But, as unfortunately often happens to him, he made a slip of the tongue by exchanging Matteotti for Andreotti, who fortunately died in his bed and with enough years on his shoulders. Thus it happened to the now head of the 5 Stars – who continues to contend with the Democratic Party, even with that of Elly Schlein, the leader of the opposition – to fall into a gigantic, metaphorical, silent laugh in the classroom where he is trying to gain experience also as a deputy, after having made them, although not yet elected to Parliament, as prime minister between 2018 and 2021.
CRAXI'S PATH
Craxi arrived at Palazzo Chigi at the age of 49, against Meloni's 45 last October, in spite of the political saints who were then Ciriaco De Mita, head of the DC, and Enrico Berlinguer, head of the PCI. He arrived there due to the electoral losses of a De Mita who had himself elected Christian Democrat secretary with the declared intention of preventing the socialist leader from succeeding where he had not arrived in 1979 with the assignment received surprisingly from the socialist president of the Republic Sandro Pertini. Only Arnaldo Forlani in the direction of the DC had then tried to leave a glimmer of space open by abstaining in the vote with which the crusader shield still led by Benigno Zaccagnini had instead slammed the door in his face.
Taking office at the helm of the government with the intention of staying there as long as possible, even though De Mita had obtained, rightly or wrongly, the impression that he had extracted from him a promise of relay race with the DC in the middle of the legislature, a little more or a little less, From the first day Craxi had to be more wary of De Mita himself, his main ally, than of Berlinguer, his main and irreducible opponent. Who did not forgive the ambition to wrest from the PCI the primacy on the left lost by the PSI in 1948, when in the so-called popular front the discipline of the communists, in their own way, in the use of preferences greatly reduced the parliamentary representation of the socialists.
DE MITA LIKE THE LEAGUE?
Although helped to watch his back by a discreet but vigilant Forlani as vice president of the Council and president of the DC, Craxi had to suffer from the secretary of the crusader shield – a bit like now Meloni from Salvini's League, who not by chance in the North he inherited the once Christian Democrat electorate – many tripped up. The most sensational of which was attempted in 1985 with the lack of direct and personal participation of the DC leader in the referendum campaign promoted by the Communists against the historic cuts to the escalator, thanks to which inflation stopped galloping into the double digits. "De Mita – Craxi vented to me on the phone on the evening of the results – only managed to win the no to cuts in his Nusco".
But, in addition to De Mita – like today Meloni from the League amid absences of ministers and Salvini himself in the parliamentary halls and ambivalent explanations of vote, in favor of arms for Ukraine but also of alarm for the worsening of the war opened by Russia – Craxi also had to beware of his defense minister and republican leader Giovanni Spadolini. That after the famous night of Sigonella, which had forced the communists to applaud the Prime Minister in the parliamentary halls, he resigned accusing Craxi of having not only contradicted but also humiliated the American allies by preventing the marines from capturing the perpetrators and the mastermind of the hijacking terrorist ship Achille Lauro. Whose passengers and crew, with the exception of the American Jew Leon Klingoffer, had been saved due to the intervention wrested from Arafat by Craxi and Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti.
After the clarification intervened directly between Craxi and the then American president Ronald Reagan, complete with an exchange of letters and subsequent meeting at the White House, the outgoing Spadolini was left with no choice but to remain in his post.
Who knows if and how many surprises Meloni is destined to procure for opponents and friends, and for us journalists, in the continuation of his work at Palazzo Chigi, like Craxi in his time. You will certainly get used to it, like your predecessor of many years ago, so different in terms of party affiliations, studies, training and so on, but passionate about politics like you, a "professional" according to the slightly critical language of Silvio Berlusconi, leafing through the newspapers in the morning, shrugging at the reading of government obituaries or the announcement of his admission to some emergency room in that great hospital city of information.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/meloni-craxi-vite-parallele/ on Sun, 26 Mar 2023 05:57:05 +0000.