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Italy on brink of having most Right-wing government since Mussolini

Italy looked set to have its first woman prime minister and most Right-wing government since the Second World War on Sunday night after exit polls suggested the country’s election was won by an alliance of three rightist parties.

Early exit polls, released after voting finished at 11pm local time, indicated that the alliance had won 41-45 per cent of the vote, which would give it control of both chambers of parliament in Rome.

The Democratic Party, the main opposition force, was predicted to win 25-29 per cent of the vote. Full results were expected to be released on Monday.

The strongest party in the Right-wing coalition is the nationalist, hard-right Brothers of Italy, which won 22-26 per cent of votes and traces its roots back to the post-war fascist movement.

Its eurosceptic leader, 45-year-old Giorgia Meloni, looked destined to become the country’s next prime minister, although it could take weeks to form the new government.

Ms Meloni said on Monday that Italian voters had given a clear mandate to the Right to form the next government and called for unity to help confront the country’s many problems.

“If we are called upon to govern this nation, we will do so for all Italians, with the aim of uniting the people, of exalting what unites them rather than what divides them,” she told reporters. “We will not betray your trust.”

Italy’s main centre-left group, the Democratic Party (PD), conceded defeat early on Monday and said it would be the largest opposition force in the next parliament.

“This is a sad evening for the country,” Debora Serracchiani, a senior PD lawmaker, told reporters in the party’s first official comment on the result. “(The Right) has the majority in parliament, but not in the country.”

A woman votes in the Italian general election at a polling station in Naples, Italy, 25 September 2022 – CIRO FUSCO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock© Provided by The Telegraph

Ms Meloni has proposed establishing a naval blockade of Italy’s shores to deter boatloads of migrants and refugees arriving from North Africa, is an avowed admirer of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and believes that white Christian civilisation is under threat.

“With these numbers, we can govern,” said Federico Rampelli, an MP and a senior member of the Brothers of Italy party.

The victory for a party descended from Italy’s fascist movement came 100 years after Benito Mussolini and his Blackshirts came to power with the March on Rome.

It was an extraordinary achievement for Ms Meloni, who was abandoned by her father as a child and grew up in a working-class district of Rome.

Her party was only founded a decade ago and took just four per cent of the vote in a general election in 2018.

She benefited from the fact that hers was the only party not to be a part of the broad coalition led by Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank, which collapsed in the summer.

The campaign was dominated by debate over the energy crisis, the soaring cost of living, the spending of 200 billion euros of post-pandemic EU funds and, to a lesser extent, the war in Ukraine.

While her political opponents have warned that a government dominated by Brothers of Italy will be a threat to democracy, Ms Meloni injected an unusual touch of levity to the election on Sunday.

She released a short video clip on TikTok in which she held two large melons in front of her chest – a play on her surname, which means “melons” in Italian. “I’ve said everything I have to say,” she said to the camera, with a knowing wink.

The Right-wing alliance, which also includes Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and the hard-right, anti-immigration League led by Matteo Salvini, had been widely expected to win around 45 per cent of the vote.

Leader of Italian right-wing Lega (League) party, Matteo Salvini casts his vote at a polling station – MASSIMO PINCA© Provided by The Telegraph

Due to a mixed voting system incorporating first-past-the-post and proportional representation, the alliance could secure 60 per cent of seats in parliament.

“The centre-right is clearly ahead in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. It’s going to be a long night, but I want to say thank you to you all,” Mr Salvini wrote on Twitter.

Ms Meloni has tried to disassociate herself from her party’s murky past.

But it still has in its emblem a tricolour flame, which in Italy has fascist connotations because it represents the flame burning on the tomb of Mussolini.

During the election campaign, Ms Meloni offered a half-hearted condemnation of fascism when asked if she thought it was “an absolute evil”.

That phrase was used 20 years ago by a prominent hard-right politician, Gianfranco Fini, who was leader of the conservative National Alliance party.

Asked whether she agreed, Ms Meloni appeared to dance around the question.

“I was in National Alliance and I don’t think I said anything different (to him). I did not dissociate myself from him.”

Many of the Italians who plan to vote for Brothers of Italy say they have no particular admiration for Mussolini and his fascist regime.

“All that stuff is from the past, from decades ago. We’ve not had that sort of extremism in Italy since the ‘years of lead’ (a period of domestic terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s) when fascists and communists were running around,” said Giovanni Di Paolo, a taxi driver in Rome.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

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