Meloni FdI commissioner in Rome. Rampelli: “I don’t know much”

“I don’t know much about it,” he tells Il Foglio Fabio Rampelli, and nothing more. But as Giorgia Meloni said, “considering the electoral campaign for the regional elections”, the decision is due “to the need to manage the race for preferences with impartiality”. The decision is the commissioning of the Brothers of Italy in Rome: Massimo Milani, local coordinator since 2016, administrative secretary since 2014 and now a deputy, but above all close to the vice president of the Rampelli Chamber, has been relieved of his office. In place of him Giovanni Donzelli, in the guise of commissioner, a loyalist of the premier.

Meloni herself communicated it, with a letter sent to the regional coordinator Paolo Trancassini and to the managers of Lazio, as well as to those directly concerned. The premier did not like last Sunday’s electoral appointment at the Brancaccio theater in Rome: presented as an event of the national party – about a thousand militants would have participated – it was actually an electoral meeting to promote the candidacies Fabrizio Ghera and Marika Rotondi alla Pisana. A sort of communicative deception, not appreciated by the leaders, which led Meloni – yesterday in Algiers – to consult the party leaders and to opt for the drastic solution, when election Sunday is now less than three weeks away.

Ghera and Colombi come from the so-called Gabbiani current, the one headed by Rampelli who, not surprisingly, was in the front row on Sunday at Brancaccio. And here lies the political weight of the story: it is perhaps the first clash at the top levels of the Brothers of Italy, at least since the party has been in government. The vice president of the Chamber is a top-ranking manager in via della Scrofa, as well as having been a sort of mentor to Giorgia Meloni, since the days of the Colle Oppio section. “I don’t know much right now,” he quips this morning. So much so that the doubt arises that he was informed of this choice once the games were over.

A tear that adds to the frictions of recent months: in October, Rampelli’s profile was considered a candidate for a ministry or for a sub-government position. Then nothing more was done about it and the historic face of the Roman right was elected to the vice-presidency of Montecitorio. Di Rampelli, before the choice fell on Francesco Rocca, there was also talk of the role of president of Lazio, as a candidate of a coalition which, polls in hand, seems destined to take over the government of the region. And even as a candidate for mayor of Rome, in the summer of 2021, his name was mentioned, then the center-right preferred Enrico Michetti to him. But yesterday’s choice by Meloni, also for the modalities, marks a new fact in the Brothers of Italy, with the fractures so far only mentioned which materialize in the change at the head of the Roman party. So internal issues are now added to the quarrels linked to the relationship with government allies.