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POLITICS

Ex-PM Conte voted leader of Italy’s Five Star Movement

Former premier Giuseppe Conte officially began work on Saturday as the new leader of Italy's Five Star Movement (M5S), the biggest party in parliament now deeply divided and trailing in opinion polls.

Ex-PM Conte voted leader of Italy's Five Star Movement
Italy's former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in Rome on February 4th, 2021. Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP)

The former law professor, who stepped down as prime minister in January, was tapped for the job months ago but in-fighting led to delays in holding a formal membership vote.

An online poll, in which Conte was the only candidate, confirmed him overnight as leader with almost 93 percent, with more than 62,000 votes.

PROFILE: Italy’s Giuseppe Conte, from ‘populist puppet’ to political survivor

Conte promised to continue supporting Mario Draghi, who took over in February at the head of a national unity government tasked with guiding Italy out of the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic.

He told Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper that the party would “all work to offer loyal cooperation to the government of a country that has yet to emerge from a health emergency”.

Conte was prime minister at the helm of two M5S-led governments but was never actually elected.

He was brought in after the M5S’s stunning win in elections in 2018, when the then proudly anti-establishment party won 33 percent of the vote and was propelled to power.

Founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, M5S swept up voters outraged at the austerity imposed in the wake of the eurozone debt crisis of 2011-12, which pushed Italy to the brink of insolvency.

But it fell short of the majority needed to govern, and formed a populist, eurosceptic government with the anti-immigration far-right League.

Barely a year later, it switched to a pro-European coalition with the centre-left Democratic Party (PD).

It remains part of Draghi’s government and the largest party in parliament, but swathes of its lawmakers have left or have been expelled from its ranks, and it is polling at around 16 percent.

Conte promised to make his mark in the government, which comprises most of the main political parties, saying: “We will make ourselves heard with a firm and clear voice.”

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EUROPEAN UNION

Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Sunday she would stand in upcoming European Parliament elections, a move apparently calculated to boost her far-right party, although she would be forced to resign immediately.

Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has neo-Fascist roots, came top in Italy’s 2022 general election with 26 percent of the vote.

It is polling at similar levels ahead of the European elections on from June 6-9.

With Meloni heading the list of candidates, Brothers of Italy could exploit its national popularity at the EU level, even though EU rules require that any winner already holding a ministerial position must immediately resign from the EU assembly.

“We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on September 25, 2022 — creating a majority that brings together the forces of the right to finally send the left into opposition, even in Europe!” Meloni told a party event in the Adriatic city of Pescara.

In a fiery, sweeping speech touching briefly on issues from surrogacy and Ramadan to artificial meat, Meloni extolled her coalition government’s one-and-a-half years in power and what she said were its efforts to combat illegal immigration, protect families and defend Christian values.

After speaking for over an hour in the combative tone reminiscent of her election campaigns, Meloni said she had decided to run for a seat in the European Parliament.

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

“I’m doing it because I want to ask Italians if they are satisfied with the work we are doing in Italy and that we’re doing in Europe,” she said, suggesting that only she could unite Europe’s conservatives.

“I’m doing it because in addition to being president of Brothers of Italy I’m also the leader of the European conservatives who want to have a decisive role in changing the course of European politics,” she added.

In her rise to power, Meloni, as head of Brothers of Italy, often railed against the European Union, “LGBT lobbies” and what she has called the politically correct rhetoric of the left, appealing to many voters with her straight talk.

“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian” she famously declared at a 2019 rally.

She used a similar tone Sunday, instructing voters to simply write “Giorgia” on their ballots.

“I have always been, I am, and will always be proud of being an ordinary person,” she shouted.

EU rules require that “newly elected MEP credentials undergo verification to ascertain that they do not hold an office that is incompatible with being a Member of the European Parliament,” including being a government minister.

READ ALSO: Why is Italy’s government being accused of helping tax dodgers?

The strategy has been used before, most recently in Italy in 2019 by Meloni’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right Lega party.

The EU Parliament elections do not provide for alliances within Italy’s parties, meaning that Brothers of Italy will be in direct competition with its coalition partners Lega and Forza Italia, founded by Silvio Berlusconi.

The Lega and Forza Italia are polling at about seven percent and eight percent, respectively.

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