Italy's lower house elects League's arch-conservative as speaker

By Giada Zampano

ROME (AA) – Italy’s rightist alliance, which on Thursday exposed its first internal fractures in the Senate, elected the League’s deputy secretary Lorenzo Fontana as the new speaker of lower house of parliament on Friday.

Fontana – an ultra-catholic with strong anti-gay, anti-abortion stances and open pro-Russian sympathies – is a highly-divisive figure, whose election was strongly criticized by the center-left opposition.

Fontana, who easily obtained the simple majority required on the second day of voting in the lower house of parliament, is a close ally of the League’s leader Matteo Salvini, who marked a tactical victory over his allies by imposing his candidacy.

The rightist bloc, which emerged as the winner from September’s national elections, on Thursday split over the election of far-right senator Ignazio La Russa as the Upper House speaker. On Friday, it tried to display a show of unity, converging on Fontana’s name.

However, the first moves of the conservative coalition led by far-right leader and incoming Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni highlighted the uneasy relationships among its members: Meloni’s leading Brothers of Italy party, which dominated the elections, and its weaker allies, Salvini’s League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.

On Thursday it was Berlusconi and his senators who threatened to derail the speaker’s election, abstaining from the vote in favor of La Russa, a Brothers of Italy veteran with fascist roots, who was elected thanks to the unexpected support of a few center-left senators.

The three leaders of the rightist alliance have been fighting for days in an attempt of pulling together a Cabinet that Meloni wants to be of “high profile.” The composition of the Cabinet will provide a better indication of the real balance among the coalition partners and their policy priorities.

However, it will become clear only when Meloni submits it to President Sergio Mattarella, likely by the next two weeks.

Meloni has been tempted by the appointment of internationally known and technical figures able to ensure some continuity with the outgoing government headed by former European Central Bank head Mario Draghi to reassure European partners and international investors.

The crucial post to be filled is the economy and finance minister, who will face the most challenging choices on how to support Italian families and businesses amid a looming recession, higher borrowing costs and spiking energy prices without putting at risk Italy’s strained finances.

Mattarella is expected to have the final say over the key ministerial posts, but the coalitions’ tensions may reemerge and continue to delay these crucial choices.