Italy news and discussions

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Secret ballot to elect president of Italy begins as Berlusconi drops out
Source: The Guardian
Italian parliamentarians will begin casting their votes for a new president on Monday after the scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi abandoned his dream of becoming the next head of state.

More than 1,000 lawmakers and regional delegates will participate in the complex secret ballot, described as being akin to the appointment of a new pope, that could go through several rounds before a successor to Sergio Mattarella, who is due to step down on 3 February, is elected.

The winner of the seven-year mandate requires a two-thirds majority within the first three rounds of voting; from the fourth, an absolute majority is sufficient. Only on three occasions in the history of the election has a new president emerged in the first round.

Berlusconi, who served Italy four times as prime minister, failed to garner enough support for his bid and in a heartfelt letter wrote that in the spirit of “national responsibility” he asked his backers to “give up” identifying him as a contender.

Read more: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142857677
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All 20 members of Senate foreign panel quit
04 May 2022

All 20 members of the Senate foreign affairs committee quit Wednesday in a bid to force out the chair, 5-Star Movement (M5S) Senator Vito Petrocelli, who is sticking to his post despite a political storm over his positions regarding the conflict in Ukraine.
Petrocelli said ahead of the mass resignation "I am not stepping down because I feel that I represent the Constitution, the will of Italians who don't have any more parties representing them in Parliament".

"I will honor the pledges for peace and international dialogue that I took with voters in 2018", said Petrocelli, who has opposed the government's package of aid, including military aid, for Ukraine after Russia invaded the country.
https://www.ansa.it/english/news/2022/0 ... 87014.html
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Italian government on brink of collapse amid fears Mario Draghi could resign
Thu 14 Jul 2022 15.40 BST

Italy’s coalition government is teetering on the brink of collapse after the Five Star Movement refused to participate in a confidence vote, raising the spectre of a snap general election.

Five Star, headed by the former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, is a formerly anti-establishment party that has plummeted in the polls and lost parliamentarians since joining the government, hurt by policy U-turns and internal divisions.

The decision to sit out the vote – which political experts say is a tactical attempt to win back grassroots support – could push Mario Draghi’s already fractured coalition to collapse, and even force early national elections later in the year.

“We are not taking part in the vote on this measure today … but this position of ours is not about confidence in the government,” said Mariolina Castellone, the leader of Five Star in the senate.

The government survived the confidence vote, but Draghi had previously said on multiple occasions that he would not carry on as premier without Five Star’s support.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... rio-draghi
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Italy PM Draghi to tender resignation on Thursday
Source: Reuters

ROME, July 14 (Reuters) - Mario Draghi said he would resign as Italian prime minister on Thursday, after a party in his ruling coalition did not participate in a confidence vote.

"I will tender my resignation to the president of the republic this evening," Draghi told the cabinet, according to a statement released by his office.

"The national unity coalition that backed this government no longer exists," he added.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/it ... 022-07-14/
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Italy's government collapses, prompting PM Draghi's resignation

Source: The Christian Science Monitor
Italian Premier Mario Draghi resigned Thursday after his ruling coalition fell apart, dealing a destabilizing blow to the country and Europe at a time of severe economic uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Mr. Draghi tendered his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella during a morning meeting at the Quirinale Palace. Mr. Mattarella, who rejected a similar resignation offer from the premier last week, “took note” of the new one and asked Mr. Draghi’s government to remain on in a caretaker capacity, the president’s office said. While the president could see if a new parliamentary majority was possible, his office indicated that he would dissolve the body and call early elections.

The turmoil couldn’t have come at a worse time for the eurozone’s third-largest economy. Like many countries, Italy is facing soaring prices for everything from food to household utilities as a result of Moscow’s invasion. On top of that, it is also suffering through a prolonged drought that is threatening crops and struggling to implement its EU-financed pandemic recovery program. Any instability in Italy could ripple out to the rest of Europe, also facing economic trouble, and deprive the EU of a respected statesman as it seeks to keep up a united front against Russia.

Mr. Draghi, who is not a politician but a former central banker, was brought in 17 months ago to navigate the economic downturn caused by COVID-19. But his government of national unity imploded Wednesday after members of his uneasy coalition of right, left, and populists rebuffed his appeal to band back together to finish the Italian Parliament’s natural term.
Read more: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/ ... esignation
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‘She’s very charismatic’: could Giorgia Meloni become Italy’s first far-right leader since Mussolini?
Sun 24 Jul 2022 16.00 BST

When the far right took power in Ladispoli, a beach town near Rome, in 2017, ending 20 years of leftwing administration, among its priorities was naming a square after Giorgio Almirante, a minister in Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship and founder of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI).

Protests from anti-fascist groups failed to thwart the plan, and in 2019 the nameplate was unveiled during a ceremony that included a blessing from the priest of the church on the same square. Almirante was described by mayor Alessandro Grando, who won a second term in June, as “the father of Italian rightwing socialism and point of reference for many Italians”.

Now many voters in Ladispoli and across Italy are looking towards Giorgia Meloni, founder of Brothers of Italy, a descendant of MSI, as their point of reference as the country gears up for snap elections on 25 September.

“Italians want a radical, epochal change, and we need it to come through a democratic process,” said Carlo Morelli, a former leftwing voter whose allegiance now lies with Brothers of Italy. “I think Meloni is the right person to bring about that change.”

Meloni, 45, could be about to fulfil her aspiration of becoming Italy’s first female prime minister. Her political party has gone from barely scraping 4% of the vote in the 2018 general elections to being the most popular in Italy, edging further up in surveys published on Friday after the collapse of Mario Draghi’s government.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... gia-meloni
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Italy could today elect its most far-right government since WW2.

Salvini has described Putin as "the best politician and statesman in the world", and is a hardline eurosceptic.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63022408
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Italy’s New Leader Is a Very Weird, Tolkien-Obsessed Right-Wing Extremist
by Abigail Weinberg
September 25, 2022

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) Early polls out of Italy following its Sunday election suggest that Giorgia Meloni, an ultra-conservative leader known for her opposition to gay rights and immigration, will become its first female prime minister—and the most extreme right-winger to run the place since, you guessed it, Benito Mussolini.

Meloni’s victory makes her party, Brothers of Italy, the most successful of the new radical-right movements thriving on Europe’s economic struggles and migration crisis. Its predecessor was a neo-fascist party formed by Mussolini supporters after World War II, although Meloni claims that she’s gotten rid of the Brothers of Italy’s outright fascists. Her fixation on the Great Replacement Theory and her vendetta against George Soros are nothing to worry about, I’m sure.

Meloni is also completely obsessed with J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, regarding the series—which has been venerated by Italian fascists for decades—as an almost Biblical text. In her early twenties, Meloni haunted the web as “Khy-ri, the dragon of the Undernet.” Tolkien, she told the [/i]New York Times[/i], explains “better than we can what conservatives believe in.” Her take on Mussolini? “Everything he did, he did for Italy.”

Meloni insists that she isn’t a fascist herself, even if her party’s flag includes the symbol of the old pro-Fascist party whose youth wing she belonged to. She praised Il Duce at the time, decades before her small, splinter party leaped to the top of the polls. Italians aren’t necessarily turning far-right themselves, one analyst told NBC—but after decades of gridlock and stagnation, they’re desperate for something “new and disruptive.”

Disaffected Italians turned out to vote in record low numbers, seemingly bearing that out. But early exit polls show the country’s far-right coalition winning about 45 percent of the vote, much more than any other parties. That puts Meloni on track to be the country’s first ultra-right prime minister since World War II, a prospect that worries everyone from gay couples to women seeking more social and economic power.
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... -tolkien/
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