Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has said the Quirinale is not in her plans, saying she is "totally focused" on the final months of her government and on an election campaign in which she will ask Italians to confirm their trust for another five years. Her remarks were reported in Bruno Vespa's new book.
Meloni rejected the notion that an excellent president of the Republic must necessarily come from the center-left. She denounced what she called an "unbearable cultural racism" under which roughly half or more of Italians are always treated as "children of a lesser god", in many cases by people who as young people cheered for the Soviet Union.
Gianfranco Rotondi, president of the DC and an FdI deputy, described her line as "very correct", citing Aldo Moro's saying that one does not run for the Quirinale but is nominated. He said the Colle is a destiny that is not chosen and that it could also happen to Meloni.
The article recalls that in 2022, according to Fedele Confalonieri, Meloni proposed the idea to Gianni Letta, who declined so as not to displease Silvio Berlusconi; Sergio Mattarella was then re-elected. The presidential term expires in 2029, and the center-left is convinced Meloni wants a second term at Palazzo Chigi as a springboard to become the first woman president.
Matteo Renzi called for unity in the broad field to "block" Meloni's "design", saying she would put her hands on the Constitutional Court through the five members appointed by the Quirinale. Renzi, leader of Italia viva, said this was "perfectly legitimate" but also "very dangerous" given what he called the right's weak institutional sense.
Meloni countered that left-wing "hysterical crises" whenever a center-right majority might name the president reveal a proprietary conception of institutions. With the election campaign already under way and the timing of the vote still uncertain between spring and autumn, she predicted rivals would create the usual "democratic alarm", pointing to emphasis on the Constitutional Court's assessment of the electoral law. She said the anti-fascist alarm did not work in 2022 and would not work in 2027.
Meloni also said citizens are more mature than politics, especially on the left, usually thinks. She claimed her government had not compromised any freedom in four years and that if anything had become radicalized in Italy it was the opposition. She described the referendum result as the moment of greatest disappointment, saying Italy had lost a great opportunity, and said that after long reflection she had decided it was all the more necessary to insist.
She said her goal remains to improve justice, make it more efficient and meritocratic, and free the judiciary from the "plague of currents", which she said subordinate justice to politics. On the Rai reform, she said Parliament is handling it and is at a good point, arguing that the left had written the current law and then complained when the right changed it.
Sources: ANSA Politica.