What happens between Meloni and Forza Italia?
Present and future of the relations between the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and Forza Italia, the party founded by Berlusconi and now led by Antonio Tajani. Damato's Scratches
Fresh from an even scurrilous clash in the Senate chamber with Matteo Renzi, who had accused Forza Italia of having "betrayed" the good soul of the founder Silvio Berlusconi by having in his own way participated, with an abstention vote, in the parliamentary rejection of the so-called fund European Save-the-States, or ESM, the Forzista group leader Maurizio Gasparri lowered his guard a bit in an interview with Foglio . Who with a certain generosity, in memory of the good times in which Berlusconi helped it to be born and grow, since the public funding assured by an improvised political movement created by Marcello Pera was not enough for Giuliano Ferrara's newspaper, kept low – so to speak – the Gasparri's heart-in-hand conversation with Marianna Rizzini, without reference in the first place and confined to page 4. All under a title on the "paradox" that Meloni ended up representing or becoming in the government coalition invented in 1994 by the then Cavaliere, clearing the right by Gianfranco Fini. Where a still seventeen-year-old Meloni couldn't even imagine being able to become vice president of the Chamber at 29, minister at 31 and prime minister at 45 and a half.
GASPARRI'S WORDS ON THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MELONI AND FORZA ITALIA
Gasparri found it "natural" to predict "success at the European elections" in June "for the government leader in office who already has high consensus", like the 28.5 percent just assigned to the "brothers of Italy" by Alessandra Ghisleri placing the League at 9.3 and Forza Italia at 7.5. The "Christian Democratic dimension" held for a long time by Berlusconi's Forzisti has now passed to Meloni's party after having briefly passed through the hands of Matteo Salvini in the 2019 European elections. Which dissipated it in an untimely government crisis promoted to provoke early elections and which ended with Nicola Zingaretti's PD climbing onto Giuseppe Conte's bandwagon in place of Salvini himself.
“However” – Gasparri admitted – the prime minister “paradoxically could have some problems due to excessive success, as regards the balance of the government coalition”. And he "explained" the paradox thus: "Up to 27, 28, 30 percent" of the post-missina right "there would be no shocks". “It's different,” it wouldn't be, if Meloni goes up again and the allies, including us, go down a lot." And they feel, they would not feel, threatened by early elections – I imagine – from which either one or the other of the prime minister's two allied parties could risk being numerically irrelevant.
Gasparri's reasoning, almost to himself, continued as follows: “Of course, you can't say to anyone: slow down your climb. And precisely for this reason we, as Forza Italia, have a challenge ahead of us: to gain votes", and not continue to lose them, even if little by little as happened in the aforementioned, Ghisleri's latest poll – perhaps not even known to Gasparri while he confided to the Foglio – with -0.2 percent in a month against the +0.3 percent of the League.
A CALL FOR ASSISTANCE?
On the eve of the extended end-of-year press conference, already postponed last week by Meloni due to an annoying seasonal flu which also kept her away from the Quirinale for the best wishes of and to the head of state, Gasparri's could even appear to be a request for help to the prime minister. Because you think, in your answers to journalists, but also in your introductory speech, more about your allies than about yourself. As if, moreover, a joke or a consideration could be enough to reduce Antonio Tajani's almost desperate difficulties, which can be glimpsed in Gasparri's words to the Foglio, to stop the losses and finally start gaining votes. But gaining it at the direct expense of the Prime Minister, and not only by trying to reduce the increasingly alarming abstention pool also mentioned not inappropriately by Sergio Mattarella in the meeting with the so-called high authorities of the State, present and past.
A Mattarella who I imagine is also worried by the hypothesis of an even stronger and more visible majority in tension and of an opposition – optimistically in the singular – even further than before from the objective of a competitive olive tree-type federation recently hoped for – nothing more – from former prime minister Romano Prodi. Who moves on words like on eggs, being careful not to crush them, aware as he is that they wouldn't even be good for an omelette.
I have just finished consulting Tajani – due to an old habit of imagining my article with a photo – the album offered by that electronic archive which can be easily accessed with the computer, in spite of the old typewriter that kept us glued to see typed paper. I was embarrassed in the choice between a Tajani with his hands clasped, awaiting the congress of his party in February and the electoral consultations scheduled until June, if they will let him manage them, as everything reasonably suggests, and a Tajani with his gaze suspended in tall, I don't know if more resigned or confident. In the meantime, I sincerely wish him a happy new year, also thinking about his difficult government tasks as Foreign Minister, besieged by wars fought in the most dramatic and authentic sense.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/giorgia-meloni-forza-italia/ on Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:43:45 +0000.