Social conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI) leader Giorgia Meloni has declared she is ready to govern as Italy’s first female prime minister, but accused the left-wing opposition of publishing “fake news” on an “unprecedented level.”
Just a week before next weekend’s Italian national election, Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni has stated she is ready to become the country’s first female prime minister ever, stating that her first priority as leader of the Italian government will be to tackle the energy crisis driving up costs for Italian consumers and businesses.
“The most effective tool is to set a European ceiling on the price of gas, which is growing mainly due to speculation. The other measure is the decoupling of the price of gas from that of energy produced from other sources,” Meloni said during an interview with the newspaper Il Giornale.
Along with increasing employment and cutting taxes, Meloni said her priority was on Italian families saying she wants to put Italian families back in the centre of political life and introduce structural and long-term policies to reverse Italy’s demographic decline as birth rates fell to record lows during the coronavirus pandemic.
Meloni also slammed the leftist media and the left-wing Democratic Party, particularly on the question of a Meloni government’s view of the conflict in Ukraine and the future relationship with the United States and the administration of President Joe Biden.
“Look, let me say first of all that in this election campaign the disinformation of the left has reached unprecedented levels. The facts systematically deny the fake news of the Democratic Party and say that the FDI and the centre-right have always voted in parliament to support Ukraine by all means, including sanctions and the delivery of weapons,” Meloni said.
“I am convinced that there is no prejudice of the current US administration towards a possible centre-right government, and it seems to me that the US State Department has repeatedly stated that it will work with any government. Italy and the United States are historical allies and the relations between Rome and Washington have always disregarded the political colour of their respective governments,” she added.
Meloni also spoke on possibly becoming Italy’s first female prime minister and the left’s attitude toward her saying, ” The truth is that the left and the feminists of our house do not tolerate the idea that a woman on the right can become prime minister.”
“On the right, however, merit counts and go ahead only if you are worth and have shown what you are capable of on the pitch. And having a female Prime Minister would mean opening the way to the affirmation of women at all levels in Italy, reaffirming the centrality of merit and value,” she added.
Enrico Letta, the leader of the Democratic Party and Meloni’s main rival in this month’s election, stated over the weekend that next weekend’s vote was the Italian equivalent of the Brexit referendum saying, “I compare this vote to Brexit. It is our Brexit.”
“I will not hand over this country to Meloni,” Letta said and vowed to oppose Meloni and her centre-right allies claiming that a Meloni government would “separate Italy from the rest of Europe.”
Recent projections expect that Meloni and her allies, which include League leader Matteo Salvini and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his party Forza Italia, could win as many as 60 per cent of the seats in the Italian parliament.
However, during her interview with Il Giornale, Meloni stated she was not ready to prematurely declare victory saying, “The polls indicate that the centre-right is ahead, but the last word belongs only to the Italians and what matters will be the real votes in the polls.”
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