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Elections: Italy’s government boosted as the right fails to take Tuscany in key vote

Italy's right took three more seats, meaning it now rules 15 out of the 20 Italian regions. But it wasn't able to snatch Tuscany despite a hard-fought battle.

Published: 22 September 2020 10:06 CEST
Elections: Italy's government boosted as the right fails to take Tuscany in key vote
A voter in Rome on Sunday. Photo: Vincenzo Pinto/AFP

A center-right coalition led by the once-powerful League leader Matteo Salvini won in three Italian regions but failed to snatch the left-wing stronghold of Tuscany, where the close-fought battle was seen as decisive for the country – and for Salvini.

READ ALSO: Why the rest of Italy is watching Tuscany's regional elections closely

The right triumphed instead in its usual strongholds of Veneto and Liguria, as well as taking Marche.

This means 15 of Italy's regions are now ruled by the right-wing coalition, which is made up of Salvini's league,  Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, and Fratelli d'Italia, led by Gioirgia Meloni.

But the defeat in the high-profile battle for the left-wing bastion of Tuscany, ruled by the left for 50 years, came as a blow for the right-wing coalition and a boost to the national government.

“It's an extraordinary victory,” the region's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) candidate Eugenio Giani said, as Salvini admitted “we knew it would be an extremely difficult fight”.
 
Experts had warned that a flurry of right-wing victories in the elections in seven regions could further fracture the brittle national governing coalition
of the centre-left PD and its ruling partner, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S).
 
In the southern region of Puglia too, the left fought off a bid by Giorgia Meloni's anti-immigration, anti-LGBT Brothers of Italy.
 
The left easily held Campania in the south.
 
 
“What could have been elections that hammered the coalition government, that caused it to break apart, have transformed into elections that will allow
it to survive and stay the course,” the Corriere della Sera's editor in chief Luciano Fontana said.
 
The two-day vote went ahead despite a threatened resurgence of the coronavirus in Italy, which is now registering more than 1,500 new cases daily.
 
Ballots were cast nationwide for a referendum on cutting parliament numbers, which passed easily.
 
 
A win in Tuscany would have bolstered the right's claim that the uneasy coalition was politically weak, and Italy's president should bring forward the 2023 national election.
 
The current government was not elected, but formed from the askes of the prevous government, which collapsed following a power grab by Matteo Salvini, whose party was formerly part of the coalition.
 
Salvini had hoped further victory at regional elections would push him back into the limelight and silenced his rivals for the far-right crown.
 
League head Matteo Salvini speaks to the media on Monday September 21st. Photo: Piero Cruciatti/AFP
 
His popularity soared when he served as interior minister and deputy prime minister in the last coalition government, pursuing hardline policies that were hostile to immigrants.
 
But with the collapse of that administration last year and the coronavirus crisis this year his profile – and his standing in the opinion polls – has
fallen. And Monday's results looked unlikely to lift it again.
 
“Salvini has been stopped in his tracks. The Tuscans did not fall for his propaganda,” Simona Bonafe, the PD's party leader in Tuscany where turnout was
62 percent, was quoted as saying by Florence-based newspaper La Nazione.
 
Giani's far-right rival in Tuscany, Susanna Ceccardi, was until recently known only to the inhabitants of Casina, a porticoed town near Pisa, which was
the first to turn to the League when she was elected mayor four years ago.
 
 
Since then, Renaissance art cities from Pisa to Siena in Tuscany have flipped to the right.
 
But the region has no glaring problems to drive a protest vote – the health system has performed well during the Covid-19 pandemic, immigrants are
well integrated, and the quality of life is high, political journalist Raffaele Palumbo told AFP.
 
Roberto Bianchi, contemporary history professor at Florence University, said the right has long tried to woo Tuscany — to little effect.
 
“In 2000, a frustrated Berlusconi even launched a campaign to 'de-Tuscanise Tuscany'. It was a disaster,” he said.

Member comments

  1. You have to laugh at Italian politics, the oppositions hold 15 out of the 20 regions yet the sitting governments feels much safer now that they won in Tuscany and will remain in power. What a crazy world we live in.

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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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