To analyse

Legislative in Italy: uncommitted politicians, disenchanted voters

Electoral campaign in Rome of Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right Italian party, La Liga.

AFP - ANDREAS SOLARO

Text by: Anne Tréca Follow

4 mins

The Italians will choose their new Parliament on September 25.

To win, the right-wing parties came together in a broad coalition ranging from Silvio Berlusconi to post-fascist Giorgia Meloni, heiress of the Italian Social Movement.

Together, they are given clear winners in all the polls and could even obtain a majority solid enough to reform the Constitution.

Facing them, the center and the left present themselves in dispersed order. 

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From our correspondent in Rome

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With 12 days to go, the atmosphere is a little tense.

No one wants to talk about their political views.

The Italians did not want these early elections.

Mario Draghi was the country's most popular politician.

And there was no real campaign!

As we will vote for a smaller Parliament, almost halved, and with blocked lists, the parties have spent weeks choosing their candidates instead of campaigning.

They were rough, sometimes contradictory, difficult to follow.

There were almost no meetings, no debates on TV.

It was only last night, September 12, that we had a face-to-face between the two main adversaries.

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A conventional and boring exchange

On the

website last night, the Italians were able to follow a debate where each speaker was in turn invited to answer the same question from the director of the newspaper.

For the first time side by side, the two main candidates for the succession of Mario Draghi to the government confronted the main themes of this campaign.

On the European Union, the use of funds from the European recovery plan, state spending and debt, wages, taxation, justice, immigration, the country's Constitution.

They disagree on everything except support for Ukraine. 

Everyone claims values ​​for Italy, but not the same ones: God, country and family for the right-wing leader, Meloni.

An open, diverse, democratic and environmentally conscious society, for his opponent on the left, Enrico Letta, who sees September 25 as a historic day, the choice for voters between two Italys, as Brexit was for the British.

The Italians no longer believe in it

Those who vote on September 25 will do so with leaden feet.

But what is more serious is that four out of ten Italians do not know if they will vote or for whom they will vote.

However, serious themes, decisive for the country, are not lacking.

The energy crisis, the revival of the economy, inflation and immigration are at the heart of the concerns of Italians, but this summer the parties have mainly applied themselves to denigrating their adversaries.

The right accuses the left of socialism at the expense of business, the left accuses the right of being fascist.

The dominant discourse is " 

".

Public opinion is totally disillusioned.

Only one in three Italians believes that the elections serve to change something.

And they have arguments.

The first is that Italy is a country of coalitions, which changes government on average every two years, and that we have recently seen in power heterogeneous alliances, unpredictable at the time of the election.

Many voters therefore tell themselves that their choice does not matter.

Then, we will vote with a new electoral law, totally incomprehensible to ordinary mortals and many voters still do not even know who is running in their constituency.

All this is therefore not very motivating.

Giorgia Meloni, leader of Fratelli d'Italia, at the gates of power

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The big favorite in the polls is Roman.

This is Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Fratelli d'Italia party, a close friend of Victor Orban, Steve Bannon, and the Spanish Vox party. 

Without denying her friendships, Giorgia Meloni is campaigning conservatively and Atlanticist, without the nationalist and reactionary overtones of her past speeches.

To become the first woman to govern Italy, she must hold her far-right base and justify the confidence of the right-wing electorate from Christian Democracy. 

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