Following attacks from the leader of the Brothers of Italy party in the Chamber of Deputies, Galeazzo Bignami, and the angry response from the Quirinale, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni went to the Quirinale this morning for a meeting with President Sergio Mattarella.
The meeting, which lasted about twenty minutes, was preceded by a phone call to the Head of State to schedule the visit.
Meloni, it is understood, expressed her "regret" to the Head of State for the "institutionally and politically inappropriate" words uttered by Francesco Saverio Garofani, advisor to the President of the Republic, later specifying that "there is no institutional conflict."
The casus belli was triggered by an article in the newspaper La Verità containing statements about Giorgia Meloni, the Democratic Party, and future political scenarios attributed to Garofani, which—according to the newspaper—were gleaned in an informal context.
Maurizio Belpietro's article spoke of a "Quirinale plan to stop Meloni": "Apparently," writes the newspaper's editor, "there's talk of a 'large national civic list,' a re-edition of the Olive Tree. But this might not be enough, and so Mattarella's advisor, Francesco Saverio Garofani, invokes providence: 'A year and a half isn't enough to find someone to beat the center-right; we need a providential jolt.'"
But that's not all. On the same page, there's a second piece detailing the "informal meeting" in which Garofani allegedly explained the details of the operation to his interlocutors.
The leader of the Prime Minister's party, Galeazzo Bignami, called for a denial, bluntly inviting the advisor to the Head of State to clarify the newspaper's report: "We trust," he said, "that these reconstructions will be denied immediately out of respect for the important role held, and their validity must be inferred otherwise." The Quirinal responded to this request, briefly expressing "astonishment" at "the statement by the leader of the party with the relative majority in the Chamber of Deputies, which appears to lend credence to yet another attack on the Presidency of the Republic, constructed to the point of the ridiculous."
Bignami then tried to correct his position, specifying that he wasn't referring to the President of the Republic, but "I don't dare drag the President into it," insisting on demanding a denial from the person concerned: "If there isn't one," he said, "we'll take note of it being Garofani's opinion."
(Unioneonline)