It has been a few days since the high-drama Italian elections resulted in the win of Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party and its right-wing coalition. Meloni, in all likelihood, will be Italy’s first female Prime Minister breaking the glass barrier.
She is also a rare phenomenon, at 45 she is very young by the standards of the past 66 of her predecessors and comes from a single-parent childhood growing up in a working-class neighbourhood in Rome. While Meloni has been accused of being neofascist, given the origins of her party, sincerely modern-day Fratelli di Italia is conservative and Meloni has made attempts at bringing it to the centre of Italian politics.
A few years ago, her declaration that she was “Giorgia, a woman, a mother, a Christian, an Italian” was laughed at. Today this woman has made history at a turbulent time by getting a significant majority which in Italian politics is an anomaly.
While the party has two minor alliance partners in Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s Lega Nord, it is Meloni that now calls the shots. Apart from moving the Brothers of Italy party to the center from its far-right origins, Meloni has also developed a strong base of experienced professionals to make up for the lack of experience in governance.
The head of international relations for the party, now Senator, is Ambassador Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agatha, a retired career diplomat and former minister of Foreign Affairs. Senator Terzi di Sant’Agatha has unique credentials, having been Italy’s ambassador to Israel, the United States and the United Nations. She also has former finance minister Giulio Tremonti as another parliamentarian from her party.
Meloni’s tenure comes at a critical juncture in international relations for Italy.
The Ukraine war has divided Italy. And Mario Draghi had just succeeded in returning Italy to its position in international politics after years of myopic leaders who had no international strategy.