Women Politicians In Italy

"(About her relationship with Palmiro Togliatti) To think that I could have made an emotional ultimatum such as “if you stay in Russia, I'll leave you” is to ignore the nature of our relationship and Togliatti's temperament. :*‘’A story of love and politics‘’, ‘'La Stampa’', March 28, 1987."

"(About the attack to Palmiro Togliatti) It is impossible to understand that dramatic event without recalling the heated climate that followed the Christian Democrats' resounding election victory on April 18, 1948. That climate was very important, it was decisive. No one could have imagined that the election campaign led by the Church of Pius XII and the civic committees of Luigi Gedda could reach such a degree of violence. A violence that did not abate on the part of the victors even after their overwhelming success. That atmosphere, I repeat, was undoubtedly at the root of the attack to Togliatti. :*‘’Four gunshots to kill the Best‘’, ‘'la Repubblica’', July 14, 1998."

"I shouldn't speak, given that I was president of the Chamber of Deputies, but de Mita's main flaw is that he wants to respond to everyone who speaks, one by one. He never waits for the discussion on a point to be exhausted. :*‘’Iotti: “De Mita does not know how to be president”, La Stampa, November 19, 1992."

"When you have faith, you can endure suffering. There are some sufferings that have no name, that you can't describe or justify, but when you believe in God, you no longer ask why me and not someone else. And that is a great achievement."

"Therefore we welcome this phase and support the effort launched by President Trump."

"Mussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy. There hasn't been any other politicians like that in the last fifty years."

"They want to call us parent 1, parent 2, gender LGBT, citizen X, with code numbers. But we are not code numbers… and we’ll defend our identity. I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian. You will not take that away from me!"

"Borders exist only if you defend them. Otherwise they do not exist."

"When I am something, I declare it. I never hide. If I were fascist, I would say that I am fascist. Instead, I have never spoken of fascism because I am not fascist."

"Yes to the natural family. No to the LGBT lobby. Yes to sexual identity. No to gender ideology."

"The Ukrainian people are defending the values of freedom and democracy on which our civilization is based, and the very foundations of international law."

"Military aid was needed to help a nation under attack."

"If a jet violates airspace, it is shot down."

"I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian, and you can't take that away from me."

"Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death."

"No to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to work for our people, no to major international finance."

"When you are a woman you are often underestimated, but that can help you."

"I believe that the state should incentivize the natural family based on marriage."

"I believe in a society where every choice has consequences, and you accept responsibility for them. I reject a society where every desire becomes a right, every whim becomes a right, where I have no responsibilities, I have only rights. I reject it. It’s wrong."

"Is it right for a society to spend more energy and resources trying to find quick and easy ways to get rid of human life, rather than trying to encourage it? Is that normal? Is that civilized? Is it right that you, correctly, cannot rip a newborn puppy from the bosom of its mother but you can with a baby, the child of a desperate mother who sold it to two rich men?"

"Why do Italian courts take away legal custody from two married parents, the natural parents of a baby girl, saying they are too old to raise her at 52 and 54, taking away their natural daughter? But if two men over 50 go abroad and buy a child, that’s fine. Why?"

"Why if they told us that that the father of Eluana Englaro should be free to disconnect the plug that kept her alive, because nobody knows better than a parent what is best for their child, why did the same not apply to the parents of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans? Why is the winner always the one who wants to disconnect the plug? Why is the winner always death?"

"If the life of a sick child like Alfie Evans is defined as pointless, how long before they define as pointless the life of a disabled or elderly person? Or anyone who doesn’t correspond to the idea of a perfect consumer?"

"Why do we spend our time fighting all types of discrimination but we pretend not to see the greatest ongoing persecution, the genocide of the world’s Christians?"

"Why is the family an enemy? Why is the family so frightening?"

"There is a single answer to all these questions. Because it defines us. Because it is our identity. Because everything that defines us is now an enemy. For those who would like us to no longer have an identity and to simply be perfect consumer slaves. And so, they attack national identity, they attack religious identity, they attack gender identity, they attack family identity. I can’t define myself as Italian, Christian, woman, mother. No. I must be Citizen X, Gender X, Parent 1, Parent 2, I must be a number. Because when I am only a number, when I no longer have an identity or roots, then I will be the perfect slave at the mercy of financial speculators. The perfect consumer."

"That’s the reason why we inspire so much fear. That’s why this [World Congress of Families] event inspires so much fear. Because we do not want to be numbers. We will defend the value of a human being. Every single human being. Because each of us has a unique genetic code that is unrepeatable. And, like it or not, that is sacred. We will defend it. We will defend God, country and family. Those things that disgust people so much. We will do it to defend our freedom because we will never be slaves and simple consumers at the mercy of financial speculators. That is our mission. That is why I came here today. Chesterton wrote more than a century ago, “Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.” That time has arrived. We are ready."

"It is a banal fact of reality that it isn't possible to imagine a guarantee of enduring security by diving Europe from the United States."

"It is right for Europe to equip itself to play its part but gullible to think it can do so on its own, outside the framework."

"in the face of proposals that we respect but do not convince us, always thanking those who at this stage take the responsibility of making proposals, I will be clear in front of this Chamber: the sending of Italian troops to Ukraine is a topic that has never been on the agenda, just as we believe that the sending of European troops, proposed initially by the United Kingdom and France, is a very complex, risky and ineffective option."

"it is the stalemate on the ground that today can lead to peace negotiations and I think we should proudly claim the united and determined support for the Ukrainian people."

"I am convinced that we must continue to work with concreteness and pragmatism, to find a possible common ground and avoid a trade war that would benefit no one, neither the United States nor Europe."

"I believe it is not wise to fall into the temptation of retaliations, which become a vicious circle in which everyone loses."

"With the same determination I want to say that we stand by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella every time he is attacked for the sole reason of having recalled who the attackers and who the attacked are."

"We want to free up African energy to guarantee younger generations a right which to date has been denied, Because here in Europe we talk a lot about the right to emigrate, but we rarely talk about guaranteeing the right to not be forced to emigrate."

"It’s a cooperation of equals, far from any predatory temptation but also far from the charitable posture with Africa that rarely is reconciled with its extraordinary potential for development."

"Italy’s Giorgia Meloni opens Africa summit with plan to curb migration and boost development. Euro News ( January 29, 2024)."

"It is an important moment for the Albanian nation and all of us. The European identity of Albania is a fact of history. Albania is Europe like Italy, regardless of whether you are part of a certain organization or not. I always smile when someone tries to claim who is European and who is not."

"We are taking a step forward in the process of European reunification. Enlargement also means new challenges, but I am convinced that the integration of the BP countries into the EU is in the best interests of Europe's security. Our destinies are intertwined."

"It’s clear that we hoped for better in terms of immigration when we have worked so hard, the results are not what we hoped for. It is certainly a very complex problem, but I am sure we will get to the bottom of it."

"I didn't believe that Giorgia Meloni could recompose a political community that had also been human: I was wrong, she has built a small authentic masterpiece, if today the right wing is the governing right wing, it is due to that political intuition to restore political dignity to the right wing."

"What can be more patriotic than all of us fighting the pandemic together. Our coronavirus warriors are fighting this war despite lack of basic safety gear. Our doctors, health workers and social service organisations are providing treatment despite the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). Police and jawans are enforcing lockdown rules. Sanitation workers are constantly cleaning to prevent the spread of infection even in the difficult times."

"Mighty editors and TV stars of Lutyens' Delhi virtually became Sonia's public relations agents. So the picture created by the media was of a highly intelligent, compassionate political leader whose only reason for being in public life was her desire to do something for India's 'poor'. They knew that she was India's de facto prime minister but nobody ever wrote this, just as nobody ever wrote that her National Advisory Council was more powerful than poor Dr Manmohan Singh's cabinet. They knew that Rahul was apolitical and confused about economic and governance issues, but they kept quiet about these things and accepted him as the heir by birth to the democratic throne of India."

"When Sonia Gandhi's government came back to power for a second term, nobody was more delighted than the denizens of Delhi's drawing rooms. They pretended that their support for Sonia was because of their 'secular' and 'socialist' convictions. But as someone who understood this milieu well, I knew it was really because the Dynasty represented for them a vindication of their class and confirmation that the people of that India that lay beyond their tiny, elite, English-speaking world was as certain as they were that India was ruled best when it was ruled by its natural-born ruling class. Prime ministers from the wilds of Gandhiji’s 'real India' like Deve Gowda, Charan Singh and Chandrashekhar had shown that they did not have the mass appeal that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty did. 'You see, dear, Sonia may well come from a humble background, but you have to admit that she is more like a maharani than most maharanis. She has learned how to rule.'"

"Everyone knew that Sonia Gandhi was India's real prime minister right from the moment in 2004 that Dr Manmohan Singh was chosen as her proxy, but her friends in the media – and their ranks were legion – continued to perpetuate the lie that she never interfered in policy. Ministers openly defied the prime minister and still they pretended that India had a real government instead of one appointed by someone whose only political qualification was that she married into a certain family. Editors who would tear government policies to shreds in their columns would never blame them on 10 Janpath. Sonia became as powerful as she did, and without any accountability, with the media playing an insidious, irresponsible role. When I asked famous TV anchors and colleagues in the print media why they accepted so compliantly her absolute refusal to give interviews they had no answers, but later I discovered that they had private access not just to her but to her children. This was enough to keep them quiet. In my own case I continued to point out every instance of direct interference by Sonia in government policy and was reviled for it. And because I was in a minority of one I soon became a target. After Shekhar Gupta resigned from the editorship of the Indian Express he told me that she had personally asked him to stop my column on the grounds of what I wrote against her."

"The reason I quote this sycophantic comment is because it reflects perfectly the consensus in smoke-filled newspaper offices and in Delhi's television studios. And Sonia, reserved to the point of being uneasy with conversation of any kind, used this to her advantage when it came to handling the media. She evolved a policy whereby she refused to talk to journalists except those who were carefully vetted as supportive and obedient. The kind that may have asked her questions about India's stand on important international issues or big political and economic problems were never allowed near her. The media was most helpful in this exercise. In newsrooms and TV studios I seemed always to run into some editor or columnist who had just come from 10 Janpath. You could tell that they had almost before they said anything in her support. No sooner did they get that invitation to tea in 10 Janpath than hard-boiled reporters would acquire so changed an expression on their faces that jokes began to be made about how 'one cup of tea with Sonia Gandhi could change the DNA of a journalist'."

"Sonia knew nothing of Indian politics but what troubled me more on that morning of her victory was that I knew well that the India she knew, and I am not at all sure loved, was an India whose boundaries did not extend beyond the drawing rooms of Lutyens' Delhi. It was an India of memsahibs and sahibs, big bungalows and ayahs and holidays in Corbett Park or in the summer months somewhere in the hills. The vast, turbulent nation that lay beyond the framework of this dreary canvas she knew nothing of. In all the years that she lived in Delhi as a prime minister's daughter-in-law and wife I never once saw her show concerns that could be described as social, except if this word were to be used in the context of social secretaries and dinner parties."

"What is true is that Sonia Gandhi's very successful political career was built with the help of many, many powerful Indians. High officials kowtowed before her as before no other political leader, even after her 'inner voice' persuaded her not to become prime minister. Fearless investigative journalists never bothered to investigate her role in the Bofors bribery scandal even after bribe money was found in the Swiss bank accounts of her two best friends, Ottavio and Maria Quattrocchi, and major politicians accepted her suzerainty. And Delhi's drawing rooms reverberated with praise of the new Empress of India. This is truly what she was, because except in matters of daily governance she remained in total charge of the government."

"India in the 1970s was a land of horrible poverty. The death rate for newborn babies was more than 100 per thousand. In Gandhiji's 'real India', it was hard to find a village of 'pucca' houses or people in those villages who could write their names. These were things never discussed in the drawing rooms in which Rajiv and Sonia spent their evenings, so the India of poverty, disease, deprivation and dirt never intruded into the life of the woman who would one day become de facto Empress of India. Later she loved saying in the handful of interviews she gave that she had never understood why anyone saw her as a foreigner because that is not how she saw herself. And the carefully vetted interviewers never asked why then she had become an Indian citizen only after her husband became a politician."

"Sonia and I had been friends in the days before Rajiv became prime minister. Tensions built up when I criticized his policies, and our friendship ended completely when she entered politics and showed that she wanted very much to become prime minister herself. There was nothing personal about my objections to her political role. They were based on my conviction that an Italian prime minister of India would seriously damage the already fragile sense of self-worth that most Indians have. Centuries of being ruled by foreigners have caused a congenital kink in the Indian psyche... but if there is reverence there is also shame at this reverence, and in retrospect I believe that if Sonia Gandhi had agreed to become prime minister in 2004, she would have certainly not won a second term for her government. At every turn she would have been accused of being the 'foreign woman', and every calamity would have been blamed on her personally. So she was well advised by her 'inner voice' to reject the job when she was offered it in 2004. This transformed her into the Mother Teresa of politics in the eyes of not just ordinary Indians but even senior political commentators. In an exchange I had on CNN-IBN with the venerable editor Vinod Mehta on Karan Thapar's show once, he said, 'Indians love people who sacrifice high office and this is why Sonia Gandhi is so loved.' She had only sacrificed accountability, not power, I reminded him, and he had no response, but he was not the only one who sang Sonia's praises after her 'sacrifice'. Since that day of 'sacrifice', sycophants had in the name of protecting secularism crawled out of everywhere. Journalists, bureaucrats, businessmen, movie stars and political leaders united to praise Sonia's 'sacrifice'. ... She spoke to nobody until she appeared in Parliament's Central Hall to announce to her newly elected MPs that her 'inner voice' had advised her against becoming prime minister and she intended to obey it. Her announcement caused hysterical shrieks and wails to rise in that high-ceilinged hall as men and women elected by the people of India to represent them in Parliament behaved like children suddenly bereaved of a parent."