Pescara, 28 April. (Adnkronos) – (by correspondent Ileana Sciarra) – In Pescara, just over a month ago, he mimed the gesture of someone putting on a helmet. A month later, still in Pescara, Giorgia Meloni is actually wearing that helmet, ready to take the field for the European elections on 8 and 9 June, leading the list in all the constituencies. The announcement, awaited but now become an ‘open secret’, comes at the end of a 73-minute speech, in which the Fdi leader supports all the battles carried out in these 18 months in government of the country. Sitting in the front row are the centre-right leaders, all except one: Matteo Salvini, who is video-connecting from Via del Corso, with his daughter Mirta at his side, the ‘impressive commitments’ which have caused his presence in Pescara to fail are linked to last Sunday to spend with the family before starting the electoral marathon. “He preferred the bridge to us…”, stings Meloni, who however immediately corrects the point: “I’m obviously joking, I know how important it is to find time to dedicate to the family”. In the afternoon the phone call arrives between the two, to take stock of the event and arrange an appointment in Rome, their respective staff say.
Smiling, but at times a little tense, Meloni explains from the stage overlooking the sea that the otoliths continue to torment her: “I feel like I’m on a roller coaster”, she confesses. “But don’t worry, I can do it”, she encourages the audience, so much so that they are once again ready to get involved. “I have always considered myself a soldier and soldiers, when they have to, do not hesitate to take the front line.” “We are facing a decisive battle, a real crossroads that does not allow us to make a wrong choice or back down. Everyone must be ready to do their part and I, as always, intend to do mine.” Driving Fdi’s race to the European elections and waging a battle for the entire centre-right: “We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on 25 September 2022: create a majority that brings together the centre-right forces and finally send the opposition the left also in Europe”.
To achieve the objective, the Prime Minister pushes on the accelerator. Regardless of those who looked like smoke in her eyes at her possible descent into the field, she decides to enter the arena giving her race maximum personalization: “Write Giorgia on the card, simply Giorgia”, she recommends to those who want to vote for her . An electoral campaign ruse, made possible by law, Minister Francesco Lollobrigida will later explain to reporters who are a little taken aback by the choice.
“There is the possibility, in elections of any kind – explains the head of agricultural policies -, to give the voter the choice whether to put the name in full or simplify it when it is clarified during the submission of candidature how the name can be replaced first name. It happens in all elections”, in these “it will be written ‘Giorgia Meloni known as Giorgia'”. A little technical artifice and the jeux sont faits.
This is an electoral stunt that the Prime Minister invests with a strong symbolic value. “If Italians think I’m doing well – he says while the packed room chants his name – I ask them to go and vote, I ask them to choose Fratelli d’Italia and I ask them to write my name on the ballot, my name of baptism: write Giorgia. The thing that personally makes me most proud is that the majority of citizens who address me continue to call me Giorgia, simply Giorgia. Not president, not Meloni, but Giorgia. Because I am and she will always be one of you: power will not change me, the Palace will not isolate me”, she promises in that Abruzzo which seems to bring her luck.
The electoral campaign, however, will not see her playing the leading role, far from it. For her it will be ‘light’, restricted, as already happened in 2009, when Silvio Berlusconi, candidate for the European elections but at the helm of Palazzo Chigi, only took part in the final rally, thanks to his role as Prime Minister constantly under the spotlight. “I want to be clear about one thing and I know you will understand me – the Prime Minister remarks -: I will not take away a single minute of the government’s activity to campaign on my name. My job is to solve the problems of this nation and I intend to do this during the election campaign too.”
Therefore the attack on the Democratic Party. “Since, fortunately, I am not the secretary of the Democratic Party – she says -, I think I can trust that my party will do its best to lend me a hand in this electoral campaign”. The game plan, moreover, is already ready. Focused on the ‘Pescara model’, with the discussion panels that animated the ‘three days’ of the programmatic conference replicated throughout Italy, featuring ministers, undersecretaries and important names from the via della Scrofa party.
Including that of Arianna Meloni, the most faithful of the faithful, responsible for the political secretariat and membership of Fdi, decisive for the fate of the party but always convincingly and by choice in the shadows. She won’t run this time either, but she will lend a hand in the election campaign by taking part in an event in Salento.
The stated objective remains that of replicating the vote achieved in the general elections, 26%. But here, among the delegates and Fdi militants who filled the three rooms in Pescara, no one makes any secret of aiming higher: with the name of “Giorgia” on the ballot, the 30% ceiling could be within reach.
