Several League leaders are calling for their leader to resign as he won just 8% of the vote in last Sunday’s election in Italy
Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini have never liked each other. Although their parties, Fratelli d’Italia (FdI, Brothers of Italy) and the League, are part of the conservative alliance that won Sunday’s elections and which includes Forza Italia, the formation of Silvio Berlusconi, Meloni and Salvini knows that they in the other their greatest rival. The two political forces are competing for the right-wing vote, so the growth of one is largely at the expense of the other. Here’s what happened in the recent elections: FdI gained 26%, 22 points more than in the previous elections held in 2018, while the League remained at 8%, compared to 17% four years ago.
The new balance of power between members of the conservative bloc, which also affects Forza Italia, going from 14% in 2018 to 8% on Sunday, will be reflected in the composition of the next government. The three parties have already started a tug-of-war to choose the names of the new Executive. It goes without saying that the Prime Minister will be Meloni, but it is not at all clear at this point who will manage the heavy portfolios, such as Economy, Defence, Foreign Affairs or Home Affairs.
It seems that it will not be possible for Salvini to win the latter, as he expected, due to the poor results of the League. The FdI leader will also want to avoid internal competition that could make her lead migration policy, one of the hot topics for both sides. Salvini’s continuity as leader of his formation’s list is also not even assured, as some voices from his party are already openly calling for his resignation.
“An extraordinary Congress of the League is needed. I would know who to choose as the new secretary, but for now I will not name names,” said Roberto Maroni, an experienced leader and former regional president of Lombardy. Salvini’s predecessor, Umberto Bossi, for his part, warned that “the people of the north have sent a clear message and need to be heard.” Bossi never agreed with his successor’s strategy of ceasing to be a northern regionalist party to become a national sovereignist power.
The best symbol of the League’s debacle, which has seen the FdI vote double in the northern regions, Salvini’s historic stronghold, is the fact that Bossi has not been re-elected: he is thus leaving Parliament 35 years after the first that he sat. Salvini now plans to appoint him a senator for life, but it seems very difficult for him to achieve that.
The League’s co-founder Giuseppe Leoni said it was a “national disgrace” that Bossi had not been re-elected and accused Salvini of forgetting the party’s roots in the north of the country. The leader justified himself by acknowledging his dissatisfaction with the outcome, which he attributed to the presence of his formation in the heterogeneous coalition supporting outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government.
Source: La Verdad
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