AMN / WEB DESK
Giorgia Meloni has been appointed Italy’s first female prime minister. Following a meeting with the country’s President, Sergio Mattarella, she announced the composition of her cabinet.
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party — a national conservative movement with neo-fascist roots — emerged as Italy’s biggest party in a snap general election held on 25 September.
It is the main force in a right-wing coalition that includes Matteo Salvini’s Northern League movement and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.
Salvini himself has been appointed deputy PM – making it the second time he has held this position – as well as transport minister.
A presidential palace official announced that Meloni, set to become the first woman to serve as the country’s prime minister, and her cabinet would be sworn in on Saturday. Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party with neo-fascist roots, was the top vote-winner in Italy’s national election last month.
A few hours before the new government’s formation was announced, Meloni, 45, a career politician, told reporters that she and her allies had unanimously asked President Sergio Mattarella to give her the mandate to govern.
Obtaining the premiership capped a remarkably quick rise for Brothers of Italy. Meloni co-founded the party in December 2012, and it was considered a fringe movement on the right during its first years.
She made the short trip to the presidential palace in a white Fiat 500 car, before a private meeting with the president that lasted well over an hour. She then announced who would be in her cabinet.
Her government will include Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and the right-of-centre Forza Italia of Silvio Berlusconi – the 86-year-old former prime minister who for days has been at the centre of a row surrounding two leaked recordings that underlined his pro-Putin views and shook the coalition.