Bari rally doubles as campaign launch for 2027 vote while critics stage rival protest\n <\/p>\n
ROME: Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Friday celebrates her hard-right government becoming the longest-lasting in Italy’s postwar history, with a rally in the southern city of Bari expected to draw thousands of supporters while opponents hold an anti-government demonstration nearby.<\/p>\n
Meloni will have been in charge of the same administration for 1,413 days \u2014 one more than billionaire media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi managed \u2014 despite crises within the other parties in her governing coalition. Italy has had 68 governments in 80 years, with past administrations toppled by the crises and defections that Meloni has so far managed to avoid.<\/p>\n
Some 80 coaches will transport supporters to the capital of the Puglia region for the event, thrown by Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy (FdI) party in an area of the port that can host up to 10,000 people, organizers say. Festivities will open with traditional Puglian light shows and DJ sets, with food trucks serving Bari’s “Assassin Spaghetti”, pasta in a spicy, smoky sauce.<\/p>\n
Meloni will address the crowd in the early evening, with Deputy Prime Ministers Matteo Salvini and Antonio Tajani expected to appear by video link at an event that effectively doubles as an election rally ahead of the 2027 vote. The official slogan is “Il Governo piu stabile, l’Italia piu forte” \u2014 “The Most Stable Government, the Strongest Italy”.<\/p>\n
Speeches will focus on the government’s achievements in just under four years in power, from more than one million extra people in employment to a \u20ac21 billion ($24 billion) reduction in personal income taxes. The fiscal stability of debt-laden Italy has greatly improved, although critics say that stability has failed to translate into growth.<\/p>\n
“Have wages increased? No. Petrol costs more, job insecurity has increased, people are retiring less and the healthcare system is functioning less effectively,” said Maurizio Landini, head of the CGIL trade union, ahead of the celebration.<\/p>\n
Meloni says Rome’s influence on the world stage has grown, despite an early friendship with US President Donald Trump falling spectacularly apart after she chastised him for attacking the pope. Her coalition, which includes the far-right, anti-immigrant League and the right-wing Forza Italia, has passed some 300 laws and decrees, the majority tackling “security” threats, from petty criminals to ravers and climate protesters.<\/p>\n
Brothers of Italy, which has neo-Fascist roots, won the 2022 election on a pledge to tackle illegal migration and says its policies have cut migrant arrivals by 80 percent. Meloni “will also have to say how she intends to use these last months ahead of the vote \u2014 a very interesting question”, said Flavia Perina, an editorialist with the daily La Stampa, at a press conference in Rome on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Across the city’s historic center, organizers of the rival demonstration accuse the government of creating a “war and weapons economy” and a “police state” and of fueling a climate of hate against migrants. That climate, they say, has favored the rise of a challenger not invited to the celebrations \u2014 a former general whose party, positioned further to the right than Meloni’s, has overtaken both the League and Forza Italia in opinion polls. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bari rally doubles as campaign launch for 2027 vote while critics stage rival protest ROME: Prime Minister Giorgia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,2847,22393,29205,21134],"class_list":["post-44982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-italy","tag-kuwait","tag-kuwait-times","tag-kuwaitnews","tag-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}