By Silvia Marchetti
ROME (MaceNews) – Italy’s center right coalition is crumbling to pieces following the presidential vote; it is now weaker and if it doesn’t quickly “recover” its chances of winning the 2023 elections are down to a minimum, according to party sources.
The center right’s three allied parties – the League group of Matteo Salvini, the former fascist party Brothers of Italy led by Giorgia Meloni and Silvio Berlusconi’s party Forza Italia (Go Italy) are bickering over their future alliance following policy contrasts during the recent presidential election.
Sources from all three parties confirm that their “team is currently dead” and needs to find new “common ground” if it intends to win the next general vote in 2023, with the League and Forza Italia much weaker as both groups are losing consensus in favor of Meloni.
“We’re at a crossroads … and can no longer find a common trait, or reason, that keeps us united. There is just a little over one year to go before the next general election and honestly, I do not think, today, that we could run together as an alliance”, said a Brothers of Italy source.
Tensions spiked when the three center-right parties decided to vote for a different head of state candidate, bringing to light ‘underground’ contrasts that have been jeopardizing the survival of the alliance ever since the birth of Mario Draghi’s government in 2021.
While the League and Forza Italia decided to support Draghi by joining his pandemic national emergency government, Brothers of Italy opted out and currently is the only party sitting at the opposition in parliament. The move has proven to be successful, and has made the populist party win ground.
According to recent polls support for Berlusconi and Salvini’s groups has dropped since their alliance with Draghi, with voters feeling ‘betrayed’ by their pro-government stance and switching allegiance in favor of Brothers of Italy.
“It’s pretty obvious that Meloni has been mad at us since one year and the presidential vote was just the trigger for this chaos: she can’t stand that we rule with Draghi while being part of a center-right coalition, which has always been part of our political inclination and nature”, argued a League official.
Before the fallout the center-right coalition could have won up to 50% of votes thereby securing the required majority to govern in 2023, but were each party to run alone, none would succeed in ruling.
Meloni’s group has 21%, while Salvini’s just 17% and Berlusconi’s party barely 8%, according to recent polls.
However, since the 2018 election Meloni’s nationalist Brothers of Italy has risen from barely 4% to becoming at present the second most supported party in Italy after the Democrats.
“In barely four months we gained so much ground and have the potential to go well beyond 25%. Our move to stay at the opposition and not become part of Draghi’s cabinet of national unity has proven to be winning”, noted a Brothers of Italy deputy.
Even though Brothers of Italy has seen its popularity rise as disappointed voters flee from the League, Forza Italia and the weakened Five Star Movement, without an alliance with other center right parties its position remains weak in the post vote scenario next year.
Officials from the Democrat party enthusiastically noted how the presidential election, other than re-appointing Sergio Mattarella as head of state for another 7 years, has had the positive outcome of “pulverizing the center right coalition like a bombshell, and of further weakening its populist stance”.
“Their inbred paradox is killing them: how can they possibly keep being allies outside of parliament when two of them are part of the government and one sits at the opposition? It’s nonsense, and voters see that”, noted a Dem official.
Contact this reporter: silvia@macenews.com
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