The target was not the President of the Republic, with whom the relationship is "excellent", but the left, which is trying to open "a crack" between Palazzo Chigi and Colle "to campaign against the premiership and for an interest party".
Giorgia Meloni thus clarifies what she meant to say last Wednesday, after the clashes at the Pisa march, indicating the danger of "removing the institutions' support" from the police.
This was the focus of the twenty-minute press briefing at the end of the double mission between Washington and Toronto, a two-day event with a "very positive" outcome in which the allies shared the priorities of the Italian G7.
Upon her return, the prime minister will have to decide whether to ask for checks in Sardinia ("In the meantime we are waiting for the end of this first recount") and will be busy with the other center-right leaders on Tuesday in Pescara for the final push for Marco Marsilio, with the hope of avoiding a new flop.
Between the USA and Canada, the Prime Minister receives the support of two precious allies, Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau (with Canada she also signed a Roadmap for strengthened cooperation), insists on the need for dialogue to achieve a de-escalation in the Middle East , on the importance of the response to the Houthis in the Red Sea, and discusses the use of Russian funds frozen in Europe, which yes "it would be right to use to reconstruct Ukraine", but is difficult from a financial and legal point of view.
So for now it is better to focus on the European solution which concerns the extra profits generated by those funds, a hypothesis that can also be discussed at the G7.
However, in the press section the questions focus above all on the tensions that have been animating the Italian political debate for days.
According to Meloni "there is an attempt to build an artificial clash with the President of the Republic, who does not exist: it is wrong and a strong lack of respect to try to use it from the left which does not want citizens to be able to directly choose who governs them".
The premiership is the basis of everything, a reform which - this is the prime minister's thesis - "deliberately does not affect the powers of the head of state, because I know that President Mattarella is a figure of guarantee, he is a unifying institution".
What worries the prime minister is therefore not the leaks from the Quirinale reported by the press, because "usually the Quirinale doesn't let its moods filter through, when it has something to say it says it: I doubt discontent can be filtered over something like this: if anyone thinks that I could refer to Mattarella, it means that he thinks that he has withdrawn support from the police. I don't think so."
Indeed, the Prime Minister considers the Head of State "different from other politicians" also because "when some policemen were surrounded by representatives of the social centers who were trying to free an irregular immigrant who had to be repatriated, he picked up the phone and expressed solidarity with the agents ".
He clarified this several times in front of journalists, "parliamentarians are also an institution, and I resented the left, always capable of criticizing when things go wrong but never capable of expressing solidarity with the police, who saw in this last year 120 officers in hospital injured during the demonstrations".
Meloni recalls that since 7 October there have been "over a thousand pro-Palestine demonstrations", that in general "it is better not to use truncheons" and admits that in the latest cases "probably some mistakes have been made: but I don't like that in 1.5% of cases where things go wrong spread to law enforcement."
While he leaves for Rome, Sardinia is finally waiting for a definitive result.
Meloni assures that she "does not regret" having bet on Paolo Truzzu, but for now she does not ask for checks on the count: "We have to wait and see how this first recount that is being carried out ends. The gap is narrowing a lot, things are going less worse than it seemed."
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