Italy’s Meloni easily wins confidence vote in parliament
ROME — Italy’s new far-rightled government of Premier Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday night easily won the first of two required confidence votes in Parliament by a comfortable margin.
The vote in the lower Chamber of Deputies was 235 in favor of her coalition government and 154 against, while there were five abstentions. The coalition needed at least 195 votes for a majority.
On Wednesday, the new government will face a vote in the upper chamber, the Senate, where it also holds a solid majority. The confidence votes are required by the Constitution for new governments.
Earlier Tuesday in the Chamber, Meloni laid out her government’s policy aims, firing back at domestic and foreign critics who are worried that her far-right politics might undermine European unity or the civil rights of Italian citizens.
She criticized the European Union for not always being ready for challenges, notably the dramatic energy crisis now threatening households and businesses.
But she pledged that her 4-day-old coalition government, which includes right-wing and center-right allies, would stay loyal to EU accords, while working for reforms, including on monetary rules.
“To pose these questions doesn’t mean being an enemy or a heretic but a practical” person, Meloni said in a 70-minute speech.
The premier’s 10-year-old Brothers of Italy party was the top vote-getter in Italy’s parliamentary election last month, winning 26% of the ballots cast.
She governs together with her main allies, anti-migrant League leader Matteo Salvini and conservative former Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
With the confidence votes out of the way, Meloni will be able to get down to the business of governing.
Meloni, 45, voiced awe at becoming the first woman to govern Italy and acknowledged the weight of that responsibility “toward all those women who face heavy and unjust” burdens in balancing family and work.
She expressed determination to “break the heavy glass ceiling that’s on our heads.”
Saying she achieved Italy’s highest government office without help from “friends,” Meloni said, “I’m what the English would call an underdog.” She referred to difficult family circumstances during her upbringing. Meloni’s father left the household when she was a young child.
Meloni has been dogged by critics who say she hasn’t unambiguously condemned fascism.
Brothers of Italy, which she co-founded in 2012, has roots in a far-right party founded by nostalgists for 20th century dictator Benito Mussolini.
“I have never felt sympathy or closeness for any non-democratic regime, including fascism,” Meloni told lawmakers in the Chamber of Deputies. She decried Mussolini’s 1938 racist laws, which persecuted Italy’s small Jewish community as “the lowest point of Italian history.”
Hundreds of migrants whom charity-operated ships rescued from smugglers’ distressed boats in the central Mediterranean in recent days are awaiting permission from authorities to get off in Italian ports.