Parliament elects govt, opposition candidates to Rai board

(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 26 - The Italian parliament on Thursday elected four new directors to the state broadcaster Rai, two from a government slate and two from an opposition list, although the opposition was split on the vote.
    The Lower House first elected a candidate close to Premier Giorgia Meloni's rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party and a TV journalist close to the leftwing opposition Green-Left Alliance (AVS).
    The FdI candidate was Federica Frangi and the Rai journalist close to AVS was Roberto Natale.
    The centre left was split on the vote with the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and the centrist Azione and Italia Viva parties boycotting the vote for Natale, who was voted in solely by the leftist populist 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the AVS.
    AVS leader Angelo Bonelli said this showed that the "broad field does not exist," referring to the sometime and erstwhile difficult alliance of leftwing and centrist parties.
    Rai parliamentary oversight panel chair Barbara Floridia commended the M5S and AVS for "preventing there being a board of directors deprived of the guard of the opposition forces and the majority naming all the directors, this ensuring a fundamental balance for the pluralism of information and the respect of the various sensibilities in the country." The Senate later Thursday elected a candidate close to the ruling rightwing League party and a candidate close to the M5S to the Rai board.
    The new League-linked director is Antonio Marano while the M5S-linked director is Alessandro di Majo. The centre-left opposition was again split on the vote, as it had been in the House earlier.
    Meloni has said she is "rebalancing" Rai after past leftwing bias amid claims she has stacked the public broadcaster with like-minded appointees and driven out left-leaning journalists.
    Rai staff have struck against her allegedly turning Rai into a government mouthpiece.
    Meloni has rejected the "Meloni TV" claims saying the left is merely irked that Rai is no longer "PD TV", referring to the main centre-left opposition party, the Democratic Party.
    photo: Frangi and Natale (ANSA).