“Anything will happen in the next European elections, I have already put my name in the election. The fear of many is that the centre-right will be reconfirmed. We will win this battle too, but Abruzzo comes first.” Under the deluge of breaking latest news, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni sounds the charge in view of the regional elections in Abruzzo on Sunday 10 March 2024. And in Fratelli d’Italia the hope is that the name of the location chosen for the final rally of the electoral campaign in support of the outgoing governor Marco Marsilio – Piazza della Rinascita, commonly known as Piazza Salotto – is a good omen for the centre-right, which after the defeat in Sardinia is starting to feel its opponents breathing down its neck even in the region bordered by the Adriatic. But the Brothers of Italy really don’t want to hear about ceding Abruzzo to the centre-left. And this is why Meloni did not want to fail to support the Fdi candidate, seeking a second mandate.
Also on stage together with Meloni were the other leaders of the coalition – Antonio Tajani, Matteo Salvini, Lorenzo Cesa and Maurizio Lupi – just as happened in Cagliari in the final rally two weeks ago. The snapshot is almost the same, if it weren’t for the pouring rain – which at a certain point risks ruining the speech of the Prime Minister who arrived from Teramo – and for Salvini’s absence on stage at the moment of the anthem national. An auspicious rain, according to Fdi’s number one who is unfazed: “Every time I come to breaking latest news, when I go on stage it rains. But be careful: because the last time it happened was the political elections and I became president of the Council. So if it rains, all in all it won’t be a bad thing…”.
Meloni’s intervention is one of struggle and government, wrapped in her pink down jacket as the evening cold begins to fall in the Adriatic city: “I get the petrol I need from the square to keep going”, she says, ‘warming up’ the audience of his supporters. Then the endorsement for Marsilio, one of his most trusted men: “Five years ago Marco achieved a feat, to be the first regional president of Fratelli d’Italia. I would like him to do another feat: to be the first president in the history of Abruzzo to be reconfirmed for a second term”. The prime minister claims the government’s results on the employment front and cites, for example, OECD data according to which per capita income in Italy grew by 1.4% in the third quarter of 2023 against 0.4% in the previous quarter : “These are results that encourage us to move forward and are the result of our unity.”
Meloni: “The center-right together by choice”
On the one hand, Meloni points out, there is a centre-right which this year celebrates 30 years and which “is together by choice and not out of interest”, on the other opponents who “are all allies but are ashamed to say it”. “I have seen incredible things – Meloni stings – Conte saying that he was not allied with Renzi, Renzi saying that he is not allied with Conte”. The arguments in the majority for the leader of Via della Scrofa are nothing more than a story “of the dreams of left-wing newspapers”: then, “there is the reality of the facts”, insists Meloni. In the background, as mentioned by the Prime Minister herself, there are the European elections, a competition in which she could participate as a candidate in all constituencies: but the issue has not yet been resolved by the head of government.
The Perugia investigation holds sway
The investigation by the Perugia Prosecutor’s Office into the alleged dossiers regarding politicians and VIPs worries Meloni and the majority partners. On the stage in breaking latest news, both the prime minister and the two deputies spoke about it. We need to “make a lot of clarity about what we are discovering in these hours from the newspapers, from an investigation according to which there are officials of the Italian State who make dossiers ad personam to pass the news on to some newspapers”, attacks Meloni who claims to know “who they are the instigators” because, he warns, “these are regime methods”.
“I would like to know whether the leaders of the Financial Police were aware of it or not”, asks the leader of the League Salvini instead. Even for the Italian secretary Tajani the dossier case represents “a serious matter”: “Is there a Big Brother who studies and prepares dossiers on everyone? And for what purposes? Nobody knows. Tomorrow – hopes the Foreign Minister – we hope that important news comes out of the Anti-Mafia meeting and that the truth comes out. We should understand who the director is.”
But now the game to be played is the regional one in Abruzzo. And in light of the outcome of the vote in Sardinia, triumphalist tones are banned in the centre-right, where optimism reigns, yes, but cautious. “We will face the voters’ judgment with serenity and determination, as we have always done”, says Giovanni Donzelli, Fdi’s organizational manager, on the sidelines of the rally in breaking latest news. Salvini goes unbalanced: “In Abruzzo we win” and “I am absolutely optimistic about the result of the League, it will be a double-digit result”. For Meloni, however, “we have yet to see the Sardinia effect because we haven’t yet understood how it ended. I’m frankly very optimistic.” (from correspondent Antonio Atte)
Read also