Seven months after the electoral victory of the sovereignist right in Italy, Giorgia Meloni wants to “ release » the cultural sector of « intolerant power of the left “. In a speech in Sicily, the head of the Italian government unabashedly displayed her intention to take over the country’s cultural institutions. First field of application of the great Melonian cleanup: Rai, public radio and television.
With our correspondent in Rome, Anne Treca
Many Italians now call it Tele Meloni. The right has placed its men in key positions in public broadcasting. Administrator, newspaper editors… The newcomers are openly right-wing, not always endowed with television experience.
It is an Italian tradition, the political parties share the channels of public service, each openly becoming the voice of its master. The left in its time had also placed its pawns. But with an overwhelming majority in Parliament, the Meloni-Salvini-Berlusconi coalition leaves the opposition only crumbs in radio and television. For Giorgia Meloni, the left exercised a hegemony of power before her. It is time to establish a Meritocracy “. Furious, two star presenters slammed the door, others could follow.
Relatives placed in other sectors
But the audiovisual sector is not the only area where the government imposes itself. By a surprise decree lowering the retirement age to 70 for directors of cultural institutions, the French director of the Naples Opera, Stéphane Lissner is de facto fired. The reconstruction of the Emilia-Romagna region devastated by the floods will not be entrusted to its elected governor, a democrat… according to tradition, but to an external manager and the examples are multiplying.
The chosen professionals do not obviously have better skills than those they replace. But they all have one quality in common: being on excellent terms with the nationalist parties.
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