ROME (AP) — Italians will vote on Sunday in what is being billed as a crucial election as Europe reels from repercussions of Russia’s war in Ukraine. For the first time in Italy since the end of World War II, the election could propel a far-right leader into the premiership.
Soaring
energy costs and quickly climbing prices for staples like bread — the
consequences of Russia’s invasion of breadbasket Ukraine — have pummeled many Italian
families and businesses.
Against that
bleak backdrop, Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party — with
neo-fascist roots and an agenda of God, homeland and Christian identity —
appear to be the front-runners in Italy’s parliamentary election.
They could
be a test case for whether hard-right sentiment is gaining more traction in the
27-nation European Union. Recently, a right-wing party in Sweden surged in
popularity by capitalizing on peoples’ fears about crime.
Meloni’s
main alliance partner is right-wing League party leader Matteo Salvini, who
blames crime on migrants. Salvini has long been a staunch ideological booster
of right-wing governments in Hungary and Poland.
“Elections
in the middle of a war, in the midst of an energy crisis and the dawn of what
is likely to be an economic crisis ... almost by definition are crucial
elections,″ said Nathalie Tocci, director of Rome-based think tank the
International Affairs Institute.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin, who ordered Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24,
is gambling that “Europe will break” under the weight of economic and energy
problems brought on by the war, Tocci told The Associated Press.
Salvini, who
draws his voter base from business owners in Italy’s north, has donned
pro-Putin T-shirts in the past. Salvini has also questioned the wisdom of
maintaining Western economic sanctions against Russia, saying they could hurt
Italy’s economic interests too much.
The
publication of polls was halted 15 days before Sunday’s vote, but before then
they indicated Meloni’s party would be the biggest vote-getter, just ahead of
the center-left Democratic Party headed by former Premier Enrico Letta.
A campaign
alliance linking Meloni to conservative allies Salvini and former Premier
Silvio Berlusconi confers a clear advantage over Letta under Italy’s complex
system of divvying up seats in Parliament.
Letta had
hoped in vain for a campaign alliance with the left-leaning populist 5-Star
Movement, the largest party in the outgoing legislature.
While it is
a fraught moment for Europe, Sunday’s election could see modern Italy’s
lowest-ever turnout. The last election, in 2018, saw record-low turnout of 73%.
Pollster Lorenzo Pregliasco says this time the percentage could drop to as low
as 66%.
Pregliasco,
who heads the YouTrend polling company, says Italy’s last three different
governing coalitions have left Italians “disaffected, disappointed. They don’t
see their vote as something that matters.”
The outgoing
government is headed by former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi. In
early 2021, Italy’s president tapped Draghi to form a unity government after the
collapse of the second ruling coalition of 5-Star leader Giuseppe Conte.
In what
Pregliasco called an “apparent paradox,” polls indicate that “most Italians
like Draghi and think his government did a good job.” Yet Meloni, the sole
major party leader to refuse to join Draghi’s coalition, is polling the
strongest.
As Tocci put
it, Meloni’s party is so popular “simply because it’s the new kid on the
block.″
Draghi has
said he doesn’t want another term.
To Meloni’s
annoyance, voters are still concerned that she hasn’t made an unambiguous break
with her party’s roots in a neo-fascist movement founded by nostalgists for
dictator Benito Mussolini after his regime’s disastrous role in World War II.
During the campaign, she declared that she is “no danger to democracy.”
Some Italian
political analysts say worries about the fascist issue aren’t their main
concern.
“I am afraid
of incompetence, not the fascist threat,″ said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political
science professor at LUISS, a private university in Rome. ”She has not governed
anything.”
Meloni
served as youth minister in Berlusconi’s last government, which ended a decade
ago.
Instead, her
main right-wing coalition partner is worth worrying about, D’Alimonte told The
AP.
“Salvini
will be the troublemaker, not Meloni,″ he said. “It is not Meloni calling for
the end of sanctions against Russia. It is Salvini. It is not Meloni calling
for more debt or more deficit. It is Salvini.”
But recent
incidents have fed worries about Brothers of Italy.
A Brothers
of Italy candidate in Sicily was suspended by his party after he posted phrases
on social media showing appreciation for Hitler. Separately, a brother of one
of Meloni’s co-founders was spotted giving what appeared to be the fascist
salute at a funeral for a relative. The brother denied that.
For years,
the right wing has crusaded against unbridled immigration, after hundreds of
thousands of migrants reached Italy’s shores aboard smugglers’ boats or vessels
that rescued them in the Mediterranean Sea. Both Meloni and Salvini have
thundered against what they see as an invasion of foreigners not sharing what
they call Italy’s “Christian” character.
Letta, who
wants to facilitate citizenship for children of legal immigrants, has, too,
played the fear card. In his party’s campaign, ads on buses, half the image
depicts a serious-looking Letta with his one-word motto, “Choose,” with the
other half featuring an ominous-looking image of Putin. Salvini and Berlusconi
have both expressed admiration for the Russian leader. Meloni backs supplying
arms so Ukraine can defend itself.
With energy
bills as much as 10 times higher than a year ago, how to save workers’ jobs
ranks high among Italian voters’ worries.
But with the
exception of Salvini, who wants to revisit Italy’s closed nuclear power plants,
candidates have largely failed to distinguish themselves in proposing solutions
to the energy crisis. Nearly all are pushing for a EU cap on gas prices.
The perils
of climate change haven’t loomed large in the Italian campaign. Italy’s tiny
Greens party, a campaign partner of Letta, is forecast to capture barely a few
seats in Parliament.
Colleen
Barry reported from Milan. Sabrina Sergi contributed to this report from Rome.