The first statistic of the Italian political elections is the record abstention rate: 64% of voters, confirming the distrust of the electorate towards the political system damaged by changes in programmes and alliances, by an incomprehensible electoral system that rewards some regions of the country to the detriment of others (a vote in Calabria is worth less than a vote in Trentino, for example) but above all by the feeling that it is not politics that really decides what needs to be done. Never before in Italy has there been such a high abstention rate.
Thus, a party, Fratelli d’Italia, which already has a clear reference to fascism in its symbol and a decidedly nationalist and conservative programme, wins for the first time and does so with 26% of the votes of a centre-right coalition in which the other 3 parties together do not reach 40% of the result and, therefore, will be in a very minority position. It will be the first time that a woman, Giorgia Meloni, will be Prime Minister in this country.
It should be noted that Fratelli d’Italia was the main opposition party to Mario Draghi’s government of national unity; the left-wing opposition forces that had united in Unione Popolare did not pass the threshold, while Sinistra Italiana, allied with the Greens and in the centre-left alliance, obtained 3.5% and barely made it into parliament.
From the point of view of peace and nonviolence, we note firstly that the issues of nuclear disarmament, the peaceful and rapid solution of the war in Ukraine, the increase in violence and the dangerous climate and ecological crisis were left out of the election campaign; Secondly, the lists that tried to interpret these concerns will not be represented in Parliament, except for a few deputies of the Left-Green Alliance and a few elected on the lists of the 5 Star Movement, which, despite the transformationism that has made it ally with everyone and participate in the last three governments, has been perceived above all in southern Italy as the only alternative to the traditional parties.
A great distance is thus established between the people who demonstrated in the squares only last Friday for the Global Climate Strike, the committees and associations fighting for human rights, for the environment, and the people concerned not only for their own lives but for that of all humanity.
