Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1479881
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 25 SEPTEMBER 2022 NEWS THE latest polls suggest that Italy will elect a supermajority for a right-wing coalition, which is expected to win over 60% of seats in both chambers – close to a two-thirds majority which would enable the winners to write constitutional rules. As the leader of the party with most votes in the coalition, Fratelli d'Italia's Giorgia Meloni will not only become Italy's first female Prime Minister but al- so the first hailing from a party rooted in fascism, whose slogan "God, Family and fatherland" sends jitters across Europe. But with so much at stake in terms of avoiding economic col- lapse and a ruinous exit from the eurozone, one may well expect a continuation of Mario Draghi's cautious fiscal policies, with business as usual in economic and foreign policy, spiced up by a divisive rhetoric which may further embolden bigots across Europe. The long march to Rome Symbolism apart, nobody is ex- pecting a return to Mussolini's authoritarian rule. But Meloni's victory does spell an important landmark in the long march of the Italian right-wing towards political respectability. For what Italy offers is a les- son on how granting legitima- cy to the far right, by offering them the opportunity to prop up centre-right governments, can eventually pave the way for them to supplant their once larger and more moderate partners. Prof. Carmen Sammut, a lec- turer in the Department of In- ternational Relations at the Uni- versity of Malta, says the Italian election may well set the trend for other European countries, especially in view of Meloni's influential role as president of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a pan-Euro- pean umbrella party which once included the British Tories along with an assortment of parties to the right of the European Peo- ple's Party (EPP). "Fuelled by fer- vent patriotism, Giorgia Meloni has become the face of the far- right firebrand in Europe's third biggest economy. She is poised to join like-minded friends in Poland, Hungary, Spain and Sweden, where a coalition gov- ernment is likely to include a far- right party founded by neo-Na- zis and skinheads." Back in 1994, in the aftermath of Tangentopoli, media mag- nate Silvio Berlusconi brought to power a coalition which in- cluded Gianfranco Fini, who had just changed the post-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano's name to the more inclusive Al- leanza Nazionale. It also includ- ed Umberto Bossi's Lega Nord, a regionalist party which at that time was more concerned with southerners than with migrants. But back then it was clear that Berlusconi was the boss, with his party Forza Italia built on the remnants of centrist parties devastated by Tangentopoli. It emerged as the dominant force in Italian politics for the next two decades. While the two right-wing par- ties reluctantly paid the price of shielding Berlusconi from the "judicial persecution" by the so- called red togas – "toghe rosse" – he took pride in having tamed the two beasts and anchoring them in the political main- stream. By 2003, Gianfranco Fini was describing fascism as an absolute evil. Six years later he disbanded his own party, which formally merged with Berlusconi's Forza Italia in the now defunct Popo- lo delle Libertà. By the time he became Speaker of the House, Fini even started showing signs of unease with Berlusconi's judi- cial obsessions. A right-wing drift saw the Lega reinventing itself as the main an- ti-immigrant party, substituting its invective against southerners with one directed against Afri- can migrants and Roma com- munities, in a bid to become a national party supplanting AN as the main party of the hard right. Yet it was only four years ago that Forza Italia formally lost its dominance, being surpassed by Matteo Salvini's Lega as the main party of the right. After disorienting his elec- torate by first teaming up with the populist 5-Star Movement (M5S) and then supporting the technocratic Draghi government in a bid to gain international le- God, family, fatherland: Will Italy go black today? Nearly a century after Mussolini's march on Rome, Italy could see a hard-right party, which still sports the neo- fascist tricolor f lame in its emblem, on the brink of winning power. But how big is the risk of Italy becoming a second Hungary? James Debono asks Friends: top - coalition partners Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi could bring Meloni down. Left - Hungarian lessons from EU bad boy Viktor Orban may be costly for Italy This way to the right...