ROME. «Today is the feast of Italians and of the Republic, not of European sovereignty. We have a President of the Republic because there is a Republic, an Italian national sovereignty.” The secretary of the League, Matteo Salvini, said this on «In half an hour» above Rai Trereferring to a tweet from Northern League senator Claudio Borghi who on social media commented on the words pronounced yesterday by the Head of State, Sergio Mattarella: «It’s June 2nd, it’s Italian Republic Day. Today the Sovereignty of our Nation is consecrated. If the President really thinks that Sovereignty belongs to the European Union instead of Italy, for consistency he should resign, because his role would no longer make sense.”
It has never happened that on the day the Republic is celebrated, the President of the Republic receives an attack of this magnitude. Also Salvini intervenes on Mattarella’s words: «We have a President of the Republic because there is a Republic, an Italian national sovereignty. I think of Europe as a set of sovereign, autonomous and free states that share some energies, some forces, but national sovereignty is absolutely fundamental.”
There is a storm over the Northern League’s intervention. «The words of Lega senator Claudio Borghi close the circle of an attack on the figure of the President of the Republic which began with the legislature with a right-wing majority – he attacks Chiara Braga, leader of the Democratic Party in the Chamber of Deputies –. The Premiership’s project is not enough, now the explicit attack involves the request for the resignation of the person most representative of national unity and the spirit of cohesion. A very serious signal on Republic Day. Salvini, leader of the same party, and deputy prime minister, rather than covering up Borghi’s words, should condemn them without ambiguity.”
For Riccardo Magi, from +Europa, «Salvini’s endorsement of the Northern League member Borghi’s tweet in which the request for Mattarella’s resignation is made represents a subversive attack by the deputy prime minister of the Meloni Government on the Head of State on the day in which Republic Day is celebrated, whose values are embodied precisely by the President of the Republic. As always, Mattarella expressed wise words of authentic democratic inspiration on the position of Italy, the founding country of the EU and which can only protect its national interests in the European context”. Not recognizing this, «means not recognizing the value of the treaties on which the European Union is founded and at the same time not recognizing oneself in the Italian Constitution which establishes the supreme value of those treaties – continues Magi -. That this is seen as an outrage on the part of the leader of the second majority party is alarming and worries that this position could be shared by Prime Minister Meloni who, at this point, must express clear words and must do so in Parliament.”
“Anyone who still has doubts about whether to vote for the League can easily overcome them after Senator Borghi’s scoundrel attack on President Mattarella and the immediate help received from his secretary, Matteo Salvini,” he thunders Osvaldo Napoli, of the national secretariat of Action. «The question does not concern the more or less extremist line of that party. The problem is one of civilization, because a majority governed by a Prime Minister who echoes the insult received from Governor De Luca and the vulgar attacks on President Mattarella offers Europe a photograph of a country in disarray.”
