“Yes, it’s true, we haven’t been together for a while. For Lollo, I would throw myself into the Tiber, as they say in Rome. We care for each other, I know what he’s worth, I know what kind of political fabric he is made of: someone capable of working 500 hours a day. He is a solid, honest person with great preparation.” Arianna Meloni breaks the silence and shares a bit of her private story in an interview with Il Foglio. An unusual move for the sister of the Prime Minister, who always shies away from the spotlight and has attracted it more than ever this summer.
She is a senior executive of Brothers of Italy, he is the Minister of Agriculture and a party colonel. At the moment, they are living separately at home. The marriage sealed in politics has not withstood the adventure of government, the daily newspaper suggests. But that doesn’t mean things will change among the Brothers of Italy. “Our political project moves forward – explains the head of FdI’s secretariat -, our personal relationships are still solid, then love is something else. Affection and esteem remain intact. For now, that’s how it is. And since these are our affairs and there are many people we love in between, I would end the morbid curiosity here. Thank you.”
Once the chapter between the Palace and gossip is closed, the interview does not end there. It inevitably shifts to the case from August. The one that, after the liberal turn of Tajani on the Ius Scholae, has generated the most discussion during the summer shortage and features none other than Arianna Meloni herself. Alessandro Sallusti has written that the prosecutors want to investigate her, perhaps for influence peddling. And with the aim of crippling the government, according to the Prime Minister, who immediately cried out for a conspiracy between judges and leftist newspapers, evoking the trajectory of Berlusconi.
However, Arianna Meloni is not so “mythomaniac” as to compare herself to “a great statesman” like Cav. Moreover, she says, she does not have all that influence that the newspapers attribute to her. The “thing that Sallusti wrote – she asserts – was based on the book and statements of Luca Palamara, a former member of the CSM, about a method that evidently existed, and I don’t know if it still exists. Let’s hope not, certainly. And then, just imagine, I’ll try to say this well: far from me to attack the judiciary. The attack, if anything, is against a certain journalism that continuously drags me into power plots and appointments for the past two years. This discourages me,” continues the sister of the Prime Minister. Who wants to stay behind the scenes. “I will continue to be a militant of Brothers of Italy.” But certainly not just any militant.