Arianna Meloni calls for responsibility at FdI convention

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 1 - Arianna Meloni, who heads the secretariat of Premier Giorgia Meloni's right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, called for responsibility at a convention on Saturday, according to well-informed sources.
    The prime minister's sister called on party members to do the utmost to support Giorgia Meloni, closing the party's national executive committee meeting held on Saturday morning, the event's participants said.
    FdI coordinator and MP Giovanni Donzelli said after the convention that "we are serene and determined".
    "We will achieve the promises we have made to Italians, the rest doesn't get in the way".
    He also said participants had discussed the party's "campaigns, the successes of these two years of Meloni government", adding that "all the predictions of the Left were wrong on all the disasters that would happen".
    Meanwhile Tourism Minister Daniela Santanchè posted pictures of herself at the meeting, seated next to Donzelli and Tommaso Foti, the minister for European affairs, the South, cohesion and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), writing on X that we are "proud of the journey we are taking and of the confidence shown to us by Italians every day".
    "We are continuing to work united to reach increasingly ambitious goals", wrote Santanchè, who has said she will not resign as minister after being indicted for alleged false accounting at her former publishing company Visibilia.
    And Donzelli on Saturday said "confidence is expressed by Parliament, the confidence Brothers of Italy has in Santanchè's work has never failed", when asked about the tourism minister and FdI member on the sidelines of the meeting.
    He added: "Santanchè is an excellent minister with an impeccable record, I think, so nobody has ever questioned her work as a minister".
    Santanchè, a 63-year-old lawmaker in FdI who resigned from her roles in Visibilia, a publishing and advertising agency that is now in administration, before she became minister in 2022, has denied all wrongdoing.
    She was among 17 people indicted last month over alleged false corporate communications, including her partner Dimitri Kunz and her sister Fiorella Garnero.
    Prosecutors alleged that the balance sheets were manipulated between 2016 and 2022 to hide millions of euros of losses and enable the company to stay in business.
    Meanwhile on Friday, Giorgia Meloni said that, in spite of daily attacks and attempts to destabilize the government, Italy's backing remained solid, publishing on social media a Supermedia Youtrend poll showing her Brothers of Italy (FdI) party had 30.1% of support, up 0.5% compared to January 16.
    "I don't look at surveys often", Meloni wrote on social media.
    "Not because they aren't important, but because I think the best way to gain confidence is to work every day with reliability and determination.
    "However, it is difficult not to notice a fact: despite daily gratuitous attacks and attempts to destabilize the government, the support of Italians remains stable", noted the premier.
    "This means one thing to me - that the work we are doing to defend national interest, create opportunities for our companies and strengthen out nation is right. " "I am going forward, as always, with my head up high", added the premier. (ANSA).