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More local election success for Italy’s right wing in Basilicata

A candidate from Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, supported by the League as part of a right wing bloc, won local elections in Italy's Basilicata region.

Published: 25 March 2019 10:21 CET
More local election success for Italy's right wing in Basilicata
Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi during local election campaigns. Photo: AFP

A right-wing alliance including Matteo Salvini’s far-right League party won local elections in the Basilicata region on Monday, ending 24 years of centre-left power in a poll seen as the last “test” of the League’s popularity before upcoming European elections.

Retired financial police general Vito Bardi, from former premier Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing Forza Italia party, took victory with most votes after Sunday's election in the southern region, which is located on the instep of Italy's “boot”.

READ ALSO:  Italy's former Northern League hunts votes in the south

New regional president Bardi's list won 42 percent of votes, according to provisional results, while the centre-left list took 33 percent.

Forza Italia's candidate was backed by right-wing parties including the anti-immigrant League as part of a list.

“Basilicata is ready for change. I will call Silvio Berlusconi, Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni to have a big party,” Bardi told local media.

A triumphant Salvini tweeted that the League had tripled its vote in a year, after similar local electoral successes for the right-wing bloc in Abruzzo and Sardinia recently.

“And now we’ll change Europe,” he wrote.

The League is in a national government coalition with the populist Five Star Movement, which won nearly 21 percent in Sunday's vote, half what it won in at elections at the national level last year.

Disappointed voters punished M5S after the party failed to fulfil campaign promises to take a hard line against the oil industry in the region, local media reported. Basilicata is home to the Val'd Agri field, which pumps 85,000 barrels per day in the largely agricultural area.

ANALYSIS: Salvini's League is in charge in Italy – these local elections prove it

The League has been riding high in the polls since last year's national elections and is eyeing greater success at the European parliament elections in May.

Political analysts said the League “will be able to deploy its anti-EU rhetoric to full effect and lock-in its recent gains in support” at the European elections.

READ ALSO: How the League's Matteo Salvini played his cards right amid Italy's political chaos 

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POLITICS

‘Worrying developments’: NGOs warn of growing pressure on Italian media freedom

Media freedom in Italy has come increasingly under pressure since Giorgia Meloni's hard-right government took office, a group of European NGOs warned on Friday following an urgent fact-finding summit.

Published: 17 May 2024 17:40 CEST
‘Worrying developments’: NGOs warn of growing pressure on Italian media freedom

They highlighted among their concerns the continued criminalisation of defamation – a law Meloni herself has used against a high-profile journalist – and the proposed takeover of a major news agency by a right-wing MP.

The two-day mission, led by the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), was planned for the autumn but brought forward due to “worrying developments”, Andreas Lamm of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) told a press conference.

The ECPMF’s monitoring project, which records incidents affecting media freedom such as legal action, editorial interference and physical attacks, recorded a spike in Italy’s numbers from 46 in 2022 to 80 in 2023.

There have been 49 so far this year.

Meloni, the leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, took office as head of a hard-right coalition government in October 2022.

A key concern of the NGOs is the increased political influence over the RAI public broadcaster, which triggered a strike by its journalists this month.

READ ALSO: Italy’s press freedom ranking drops amid fears of government ‘censorship’

“We know RAI was always politicised…but now we are at another level,” said Renate Schroeder, director of the Brussels-based EFJ.

The NGO representatives – who will write up a formal report in the coming weeks – recommended the appointment of fully independent directors to RAI, among other measures.

They also raised concerns about the failure of repeated Italian governments to decriminalise defamation, despite calls for reform by the country’s Constitutional Court.

Meloni herself successfully sued journalist Roberto Saviano last year for criticising her attitude to migrants.

“In a European democracy a prime minister does not respond to criticism by legally intimidating writers like Saviano,” said David Diaz-Jogeix of London-based Article 19.

He said that a proposed reform being debated in parliament, which would replace imprisonment with fines of up to 50,000 euros, “does not meet the bare minimum of international and European standards of freedom of expression”.

The experts also warned about the mooted takeover of the AGI news agency by a group owned by a member of parliament with Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s far-right League party – a proposal that also triggered journalist strikes.

READ ALSO: How much control does Giorgia Meloni’s government have over Italian media?

Beatrice Chioccioli of the International Press Institute said it posed a “significant risk for the editorial independence” of the agency.

The so-called Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) consortium expressed disappointment that no member of Meloni’s coalition responded to requests to meet with them.

They said that, as things stand, Italy is likely to be in breach of a new EU media freedom law, introduced partly because of fears of deteriorating standards in countries such as Hungary and Poland.

Schroeder said next month’s European Parliament elections could be a “turning point”, warning that an increase in power of the far-right across the bloc “will have an influence also on media freedom”.

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