The 2022 Italian Parliamentary election

On September 25, 2022 Giorgia Meloni had won the 2022 Prime minister election, and it seems to be that “Giorgia Meloni looks set to become Italy’s first female prime minister, with her far-right Brothers of Italy party being projected to have won 26% of the vote over the weekend.”

With most citizens of Italy being quite satisfied with the outcome of the election, and the right wing leaders throughout the world feeling the same way as well, with this election being seen as not only a victory for Meloni and her party but as well seen as a historic moment, a nationalist message to Brussels. However even with the victory and celebration for potential future Prime Minister Meloni’s election there are always people who oppose the ideals of someone else, and many people in Italy are quite dissatisfied with the results of the election in Italy.

The source for such dissatisfaction from citizens in Italy mostly comes from Ms Meloni’s ideals, recent controversies, and the sheer fact that Ms Meloni is a leader of the far right political party. Throughout history we have not seen Italy under the rule of a far right party since the year 1945 when former Dictator and Prime Minister Benito Mussolini was in power during the time of World War two. So while many people do not like Ms Meloni because of this, the right leaning leader had expressed that she “promised to govern for the whole of the country and said she would not betray the trust of voters” and while “Her image has been softened in recent times she dislikes being linked to Italy’s fascist history, but Meloni still uses a controversial old fascist slogan popular among the far right: “God, fatherland and family.” Along with this the people of Italy that did not vote for her say “they don’t recognise themselves in her nationalist, protectionist proposals, her anti-immigration rhetoric and conservative family mores.” meaning that Ms Meloni in their eyes is xenophobic because of her beliefs on the topic of anti-immigration, and thoughts on the LGBTQ+ community. According to Mark Lowen: Ms Meloni states that “she has campaigned against LGBT rights, wants a naval blockade of Libya and has warned repeatedly against Muslim migrants.”

Even though all of this controversy in the past with Ms Meloni has striken quite a reputation for the citizens of Italy, she plans on doing good while elected as well. One of the things she plans on doing is revamping and revising the Italy 1978 abortion law; according to this text said by Ms Meloni herself “We want to give women who think abortion is the only option the right to make a different choice. We are not removing rights, we’re adding to them,” Meloni had said she would move the focus on prevention, but did not elaborate further on how she was going to do it. All that we know is that Members of her party have spoken out against prevention methods such as sex education like they have used in schools from the past. However The Brothers of Italy manifesto said it would create a fund to help women in need of financial support.

While this election has gone off to a great start for Ms Meloni, it is deemed more likely that Ms Meloni will be the next Prime Minister of Italy compared to any of the competition, and while her ideals, and political stance may not fit many peoples ideals as a society, we can only do nothing but see what happens and evaluate the decisions Ms Meloni makes so that we may use it and apply it for the future to come, because not only is this event important it is needed, because of a new face being given to what used to be a Facist party, but now can change and blossom into something amazing. So as IB learners here at City we are to not judge a person purely based on their ideals as a person but instead we focus on what their ideals can change into or become, along with judging them on what they have, hope to, and will accomplish in the future.