Premier Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday
called for Liberation Day celebrations to be a moment of
"rediscovered national harmony" after days of heated debate over
the relationship of Italy's right wing with its Fascist past.
In an open letter to Corriere della Sera, the Premier and leader
of the right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) shared "some
reflections" that she hoped might "contribute to making this
anniversary a moment of rediscovered national harmony, in which
the celebration of our newfound freedom helps us understand and
strengthen Italy's role in the world as an indispensable bulwark
of democracy."
"I do this," she added, "with the serenity of one in whom these
reflections matured within the ranks of her own political
affiliation some 30 years ago", continued Meloni, adding that
"the parties representing the right in Parliament declared their
incompatibility with any nostalgia for fascism" many years ago.
"The fundamental fruit of April 25 was, and remains without
doubt, the affirmation of democratic values, which had been
trampled by Fascism and which we find carved into the Republican
Constitution," said the Premier.
"The patient negotiation aimed at establishing the principles
and rules of our nascent liberal democracy - an outcome not
unanimously desired by all components of the Resistance -
resulted in a text (the Constitution) that set out to unite and
not to divide," she added.
On Monday Italian Partisans group ANPI urged the premier to
disassociate herself from Fascism after allegedly failing to do
so since leading the right-wing to government in September 2022.
The call came against the backdrop of controversy involving
Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa, a top FdI exponent, in relation
to his criticism of a Partisan attack in Rome that triggered the
Ardeatine Caves reprisal massacre, statement on Thursday that
the postwar Constitution does not contain the word 'antifascism'
and decision to spend most of Liberation Day commemorating
anti-Communist hero Jan Palach in Prague instead of visiting
Nazi atrocity sites in Italy.
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