Italy will know on Monday who will have won the legislative election on Sunday 25 September. An election closely followed in Europe. Daniel Zapalla, correspondent for the Italian daily Avvenire is the guest of European microphone.
franceinfo: Will these elections tomorrow Sunday be followed by many observers and countries? With Giorgia Meloni in an advantageous position according to the polls…
Daniel Zapalla: Yes, of course, this electoral deadline under the spotlight of all the Italian and European media. We are in an Italy today which is quite asking what its future will be. An Italy weighed down by inflation, the debt which has exploded and the Italians, according to the polls indeed, could give a significant, even overwhelming majority to this coalition of the right which has been led by this rising figure for a little while, Giorgia Meloni .
We already talked about it last year. It was starting to rise a little…
Yes, now she has become the character at the center of the scene of this coalition, and Giorgia Meloni, the “leader” of this party, Fratelli d’Italia, who has a very ambiguous discourse on the post-fascist legacy. It is a party that still wears the symbols of the tricolor flame, which at the same time says: there is no place in our party for those nostalgic for fascism. There is this ambiguity.
Much more ambiguous, this party is called Fratelli d’Italia, that’s what the anthem of the Italian Republic is called, Inno di Mamelli…
Exactly. This is part of a communication strategy that we had already seen with Berlusconi’s party, Forza Italia, which is years the coalition with the party of the League of Matteo Salvini, the three rights. The current electoral system still gives the advantage to coalitions. So, effectively, there is this triple coalition with three parties on the right. On the other side, we have on the contrary a left completely disunited, which does not manage to find coherence in its program. And so it really risks experiencing a historic debacle.
But how, in Italy, did we arrive at the arrival of Giorgia Meloni?
I believe that there is in the country a wind of “dégagisme” which crosses the consciences of the voters since already a good ten years, even more. And so, we saw a series of political phenomena that could be described as meteors. And there was one fact the left had its chance at the time: remember Matteo Renzi, this young Florentine who had become the darling of the European lefts. But indeed, it is a political phenomenon that did not last long.
Then, we had the rise, also dazzling, of the Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo, the comedian. There again, a sort of new phenomenon, especially at the level of the programme, a sort of political UFO which mixes elements from the left with elements from the right and which has made a spectacular breakthrough, but there too, with a gradual fall in polls. And there, there is this wind of protest. It is above all a wind that is fed by disappointment.
Because indeed, there are major, deep problems in terms of employment, in terms of the divide between northern Italy and the “Méridione”, between an Italy of entrepreneurs who are struggling to find new recipes and the country of poverty which is still at record highs. So we see that it is a country crossed by a certain number of cleavages which remain. And of course, the Italian voter is fed up. We were talking about Beppe Grillo who, at some point, had really rode these winds of disappointment like today, this is the case of Giorgia Meloni.
We remind you that the Italian elections are a single round. So, Monday morning, what? How will Italy wake up?
Hard to say. But today, indeed, all the forecasts tell us that Italy could know this female figure, but really, at the heart of the chessboard. And it will be the first time.