“I did not give up and I will not give up”: Meloni celebrates record as reelection campaign begins

“There were days when I felt I was swimming through glue, but I did not give up and I will not give up.” With those words, Giorgia Meloni turned a celebration of her government’s longevity into the opening salvo of her campaign for a second term.

Ten thousand supporters gathered in Bari, the capital of Apulia, where the Italian prime minister marked 1,413 days in power. That record surpasses Silvio Berlusconi’s previous mark. Speaking for nearly an hour from a stage at the port, Meloni asked Italians to give her more time to deepen the changes she said her government had begun and to complete unfinished work.

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There were days when I felt I was swimming through glue, but I did not give up and I will not give up. Four years are not enough to reach the goal of an Italy that does not have to ask anyone for permission.

Meloni pointed to employment, public finances, security and migration policy as evidence of her government’s record. She described stability as its first “great reform” and attacked the center-left opposition as a “caviar left” disconnected from ordinary people and facing an identity crisis, without a clear leader or program for next year’s election.

The rally’s language centered on freedom, identity, security, national pride and the idea of “Italians first.” Italian flags and flags of Brothers of Italy, the party Meloni leads, flew above the crowd. She recalled taking office on Oct. 22, 2022, when, she said, few people in Europe or elsewhere believed in her government, the most right-wing administration in Italy since Benito Mussolini’s era.

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Italy is no longer Europe’s watched case. We were the sick man of Europe, the country that constantly changed governments. Today our nation is taken very seriously.

Meloni said her coalition partners, Forza Italia and the League, had delivered political stability and made Italy stronger and more respected. “Italy is no longer Europe’s watched case. We were the sick man of Europe, the country that constantly changed governments. Today our nation is taken very seriously,” she told the crowd.

Opposition figures challenged that account before the record was reached. Elly Schlein, leader of the Democratic Party, accused Meloni of shutting herself away in government offices and throwing away four years. “The economy is stalled,” Schlein said, arguing that Meloni had done nothing, or far less and something different, from what she promised during the campaign.

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The prime minister shut herself away in the palace and threw away four years.