Giorgia Meloni track to be Italy’s first female prime minister

ROME — Italy was all but assured of having its first right-wing government since the fall of Mussolini on Sunday, after exit polls showed the upstart, far-right Brothers of Italy had become the country’s largest political party with nearly a quarter of the overall vote, outpacing more than a dozen other parties.
 
That sets the table for Giorgia Meloni, 45, a former Fascist activist who has sent shivers of the spines of more traditional leaders across the 27-nation European Union. If she becomes prime minister, as many here predict, Ms. Meloni will be the first woman to hold that post in Italy and instantly the most significant far-right figure in a major European Union and NATO country.
 
Next up: Italy’s head of state, Sergio Mattarella, will meet with the leaders of the largest parties in the coming days and ask one leader, probably Ms. Meloni, to try to cobble together a majority coalition. Together, exit polls Sunday evening gave the three main right-wing parties totaled around 40% of the vote, while the center-left alliance of former Democratic Party Premier Enrico Letta, received just under a third of the vote, according to the state broadcaster Rai.

Ms. Meloni‘s party appeared to grab the largest single share of vote with about 25%, the Rai exit poll showed, putting Ms. Meloni in the driver’s seat in the jockeying for power to come.

But with Italy‘s electoral laws providing extra seats to the party with the most votes, there will be a right-of-center majority if the parties work together as they have vowed to do.
 
Regardless of what happens, the strong result for the Brothers of Italy will create a delicate dilemma for European powers to keep Italy — the third largest economy in the European Union — from drifting toward fellow conservative EU member states like Hungary and Poland. And that is a dilemma that will be felt in Washington and around the world, whether it’s on NATO commitments, the West’s united stance against Russia in Ukraine, immigration and social policy, or the source of deeper European integration.
 
While she has largely sided with fellow EU countries in supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, Ms. Meloni has also called for a naval blockade to halt immigration from Africa and believes Italy should take a more aggressive stance to defend Italy’s rights within the 27-nation European Union. Ms. Meloni’s party logo still includes the tri-colored Fascist flame and she still uses the Mussolini-era slogan “God, homeland, and family.”
 
But she appears to have succeeded where fellow far-right figures like France’s Marine Le Pen have fallen short by working to distance herself from her image as a simple far-right firebrand: “We will show that there is nobody in the world who needs to be afraid of us,” she told a rally last week. 

Analysts say Ms. Meloni skillfully played up her own working-class roots and her party’s stance outside the traditional political establishment. The Brothers of Italy saw its popularity rise as it stayed on the sidelines and refused to join any of the last three unpopular coalition governments.
 
Anxiety in Europe 

That hasn’t quelled the anxiety in much of the rest of Europe about the changes coming in Rome. The shift is likely to be all the more jarring because the new right-wing coalition will replace a centrist government headed by Mario Draghi, a former head of the European Central Bank who was widely admired in Brussels and the major Western European capitals.

The German magazine Stern called Mr. Meloni “the most dangerous woman in Europe,” and The Guardian, the voice of liberal Britain, said she was “a danger to Italy and the rest of Europe.” In France, Le Monde called her a “figurehead of the radical right.”
 
But while European leaders were apprehensive over the rise of Meloni, a 45-year-old unmarried mother of one, Italians were mixed. Her supporters said the Rome native, who often speaks in the rough dialect of the capital, and her allies will help “spark change” and “send the old parties to hell.” But even those who did not support her were philosophical about Sunday’s vote.
 
“I didn’t vote for them, but I think Brothers of Italy will win and I think the Italians will struggle but survive,” said Anna Di Lorenzo, a 51-year-old shop owner who voted in the blue-collar Rome neighborhood of Testaccio. “We’ve seen this before.”
 
Vittorio Mazzi, a 35-year-old bus driver who voted in a polling site in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood, said he resented warnings against Ms. Meloni from non-Italian leaders and pundits in Europe.
 
“I recognize her faults, but if people aren’t Italian they should just recognize our right to vote as we please,” he said.
 
Though right-wing Italian parties have been part of Italian governments in the past, this would be the first time such a clear conservative coalition will hold power on its own since Fascist strongman Benito Mussolini was overthrown in 1943. Ms. Meloni, whose party is founded on the ashes of Mr. Mussolini’s Fascists, is likely to head the 74th Italian government in the 79 since Mr. Mussolini’s fall.
 
Both Ms. Meloni and likely coalition partner Silvio Berlusconi, the 85-year-old former prime minister, stumbled with a series of gaffes early in the campaign, called after Mr. Draghi’s centrist government imploded. Mr. Berlusconi is a billionaire media tycoon and a four-time prime minister whose Forza Italia party is predicted to be a junior member in any right-of-center coalition.
 
Last Monday, Brothers of Italy suspended Calogero Pisano, one of the party’s candidates for parliament in Sicily, after it was revealed he used words of praise for Adolf Hitler, calling him  a “great statesman,” as well as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, saying “I’m with him.”
 
Then on Friday, Mr. Berlusconi declared that Putin was forced to invade Ukraine in order to replace the government of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky with “decent people” far removed from the European Union consensus stance on the Ukraine conflict. Mr. Berlusconi’s remark sparked a round of chuckling in EU capitals and in Brussels, where top officials declined to address the comment.
 
Also on Friday, Ms. Meloni said that if she becomes the country’s premier, she’d withdraw from China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative. Since Italy joined the program in 2018, it has sparked billions in new investments but also sparked fears it would take Italy closer to becoming a kind of Chinese economic vassal state. That deal was agreed to by a government headed by a rival to Ms. Meloni, former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, with Meloni ally, Matteo Salvini of the anti-migrant League party, as a senior partner.
 
Mr. Draghi remains as caretaker until a new government is sworn in.