Giorgia Meloni is on an international tour, a new destination every few days. In the past few days she has been to Algiers and Tripoli to discuss the country’s gas supply. This Friday she will be received with military honors in Berlin.
This is the Italian Prime Minister’s first visit to Germany after more than three months in office – that’s quite late. Then come Brussels, Warsaw, Kyiv. Full agenda. And in Italy one cannot shake the impression that she prefers being abroad to her than the home stage with its many political dangers surrounding her ministers and party friends.
In friendly countries, people are still impressed by the fact that Meloni actually implemented a few key commitments from the election campaign: Your government remains in line when it comes to supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia, despite different moods in the coalition. And she doesn’t waste any money, keeps the already stressed bookkeeping in order.
Favor among the people is slowly fading, reality has caught up with the right-wing
Meloni then says with some pride that the spread, i.e. the difference in interest rates between German and Italian government bonds, has been under control to some extent for some time. This spread is something like the credibility level for an Italian government. It looks as if the post-fascist has succeeded in calming concerns in Western Europe.
But things are not going so well at home. For the first time since the parliamentary elections of September 25, 2022, the popularity ratings for her personally and for her party, the Fratelli d’Italia, are not falling sharply, but the trend seems to have broken.
In any case, the political analysts are seeing the first signs of disillusionment among the people. Realism and pragmatism may be well received abroad, but at home the main concerns are the cost of inflation and the prices of petrol and diesel. As a member of the opposition, Meloni had always promised that she would abolish the old taxes on petrol when she came to power: now reality has caught up with her, the state cannot afford certain things. And already some of the favor dwindles.
There are also problems with their political staff, who keep getting in the way – with incompetence or with old tics. Many of Italy’s brothers do not seem to have realized that they are no longer isolated but in power.
The coordinator of the Fratelli d’Italia quotes from secret files in Parliament
The latest case revolves around the coordinator of the Fratelli d’Italia, Giovanni Donzelli, one of Meloni’s most loyal companions. Donzelli recently asked in parliament, with a polemical undertone, whether the opposition Social Democrats felt closer to the mafiosi and the terrorists than to the Italian state. Earlier, three parliamentarians from the Partito Democratico had visited the anarchist Alfredo Cospito in prison.
Cospito, 55, has been on a hunger strike for more than a hundred days to protest his harsh prison regime. Parliamentarians wanted to see how Cospito was doing after losing 45 kilograms in body weight. There is concern that the ideologue could starve himself to death and become a martyr in his scene.
For his tirade, Donzelli quoted from secret documents that a state secretary in the Ministry of Justice and party friend had passed on to him. Was he allowed? In parliament he was accused of “institutional illiteracy”. An investigation is now underway.
Even within the governing coalition, the anger is great. “It’s not our style,” a prominent politician told Forza Italia. The right-wing populist Lega is said to be keeping quiet in order to obtain concessions for its own concerns in return. The uncomfortable question is now being discussed again as to whether Meloni’s party even has enough capable people in its ranks to lead a large country. Maybe she’d rather tour a bit abroad.