‘Crucial’ vote could move Italy to right; many might boycott
ROME — Italians will vote on Sunday in what is being billed as a crucial election as Europe reels from the repercussions of Russia’s war in Ukraine. For the first time in Italy since the end of World War II, the election could propel a far-right leader into the premiership.
Soaring energy costs and quickly climbing prices for staples like bread — the consequences of Russia’s invasion of breadbasket Ukraine — have pummeled many Italian families and businesses.
ADVERTISING
Against that bleak backdrop, Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party — with neo-fascist roots and an agenda of God, homeland and Christian identity — appear to be the front-runners in Italy’s parliamentary election.
They could be a test case for whether hard-right sentiment is gaining more traction in the 27-nation European Union. Recently, a right-wing party in Sweden surged in popularity by capitalizing on peoples’ fears about crime.
No single party in Italy stands much chance of winning enough seats to govern alone, but right-wing and right-leaning centrists forged a campaign pact that could secure Meloni a parliamentary majority and propel her into power. Her main alliance partner is right-wing League party leader Matteo Salvini, who blames crime on migrants and has long been a staunch ideological booster of right-wing governments in Hungary and Poland.
“Elections in the middle of a war, in the midst of an energy crisis and the dawn of what is likely to be an economic crisis … almost by definition are crucial elections,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of Rome-based think tank the International Affairs Institute. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, is gambling that “Europe will break” under the weight of economic and energy problems brought on by the war, Tocci told The Associated Press.
