Analysis. To defend her reform – cast, as per tradition, as the “mother of all reforms from which everything else flows” – Meloni hammered on economic issues.
written by Andrea Colombo
Topic Italy
May 13, 2024
As the reform expanding the prime minister’s powers arrived in the Senate, the premier started to display a different attitude. She stopped with the vintage populist tropes she was using to sell the direct election of the prime minister: “Do you want to decide for yourselves or do you want others to decide for you?” Instead, she put on the appearance of someone open to discussion, extolling dialogue even though in substance she is still barreling forward like a tank.
She ordered her parliamentary majority to avoid any radical maneuvers to bypass the opposition’s filibuster of nearly 3,000 amendments. The reform will almost certainly be voted on soon after the European elections, not before. That’s not bad for her: getting to the polls with the opposition manning the barricades on the Senate floor would be worse.
For its part, the opposition is openly on the warpath. The PD secretary, speaking in front of the extraordinary assembly of senators, denounced Meloni’s accelerated push, dictated “by electoral reasons: since they have nothing to run on, they want to boast about these dangerous reforms. I am asking you to make a wall with your bodies and your voices.” On the Senate floor, the voices........