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Giorgia Meloni led her right-wing allies in a joint rally Thursday ahead of their expected victory in weekend elections, in which the one-time Mussolini supporter hopes to become Italy’s first female prime minister.
Meloni’s post-fascist Brothers of Italy is campaigning for Sunday’s vote in a coalition with Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.
But opinion polls put her well ahead, suggesting she will guide what would be Italy’s first far-right led government since the fall of dictator Benito Mussolini after World War II.
“We are ready! You will see on Sunday,” she declared to the packed crowd in Piazza del Popolo in Rome, most of them brandishing Brothers of Italy flags.
Despite the tensions within her alliance, she vowed to govern for five years with a programme that includes low taxes, higher social spending – and strong defence of Italy’s interests on the world stage.
The elections are being closely watched in Brussels, where the prospect of a eurosceptic, populist government heading the eurozone’s third largest economy has sparked concerns.
Meloni, 45, has sought to reassure investors worried about her links with Italy’s post-fascist movement, while at the same time wooing voters disaffected with the status quo.
“I’m voting for Meloni, she’s never betrayed me,” Giuli Ruggeri, a 53-year-old unemployed supporter, told AFP at the rally in Rome.
Concrete measures
The event signalled the start of a final sprint for Italy’s politicians before a weekend campaign blackout.
Meloni will head to Naples on Friday, amid indications that the populist Five Star Movement – which won the biggest share of the vote in 2018 – is gaining ground in the poverty-stricken south.
Runaway inflation, a looming winter energy crisis and tensions with Russia over the war in Ukraine have dominated the…
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Source : france24
