Tag: Sergio Mattarella

King Charles III crowned in Westminster Abbey

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LONDON — In a ceremony of pageantry, quirks and ancient tradition, King Charles III, Britain’s 62nd monarch, was on Saturday officially crowned head of state of the United Kingdom and 14 Commonwealth realms.

The king, who succeeds his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was coronated at London’s Westminster Abbey alongside his wife Camilla in a two-hour ceremony attended by world leaders, members of the royal family, foreign dignitaries, faith leaders, and heads of state.

The historic event was overseen by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and punctuated with rituals, regalia, and objects dating back centuries.

These included oaths, spurs, a Jewelled Sword of Offering, various sceptres and an orb. The king was anointed with holy oil via a coronation spoon, while the watching public were offered the chance to declare their loyalty by proclaiming: “God save King Charles.”

Among the 2,000 guests were French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte. First Lady Jill Biden, the wife of U.S. President Joe Biden, was also present, accompanied by her granddaughter, Finnegan. They wore blue and gold attire respectively, interpreted as support for Ukraine, whose flags share the same colors.

The U.S. president himself chose not to attend, but wrote on Twitter: “Congratulations to King Charles III and Queen Camilla on their Coronation. The enduring friendship between the U.S. and the U.K. is a source of strength for both our peoples. I am proud the First Lady is representing the United States for this historic occasion.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sat beside President of the European Council Charles Michel, despite long-standing tensions between Brussels’ two most prominent politicians. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola was also in the congregation.

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry was seen speaking briefly to former U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, now president for global affairs at Meta. King Charles has been a life-long campaigner on the environment.

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who gave a reading during the service, was joined by senior members of his Cabinet and as well as all his living predecessors, including Tony Blair, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss — the latter having served in Downing Street for just 49 days last year. Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt, a member of Sunak’s Cabinet, took a leading role in the ceremony, carrying the sword of state due to her ceremonial role as lord president of the privy council.

Keir Starmer, leader of the U.K.’s opposition Labour Party, sat next to the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, while leaders of the devolved nations in the U.K. were also in attendance. Prince Harry was seated among members of the U.K. royal family, though his wife, Meghan Markle, remained in California with their children.

Also present were the presidents of Germany and Italy, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Sergio Mattarella, China’s vice-president, Han Zheng, and the prime minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif. Han’s attendance had been a subject of controversy in the U.K. due to his central role in China’s repression of Hong Kong.

There were also leaders from the 14 Commonwealth nations for whom Charles is head of state, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand’s Chris Hipkins, as well as representatives from Grenada, Papa New Guinea, the Bahamas and others.

Celebrities such as singer Katy Perry, chef Jamie Oliver, actor Emma Thompson, and British TV duo Ant and Dec also took seats in the Abbey.

Thousands of flag-carrying members of the public gathered along the procession route | Niklaas Halle’n/AFP via Getty Images

Britain is a constitutional monarchy, and as head of state King Charles has a ceremonial role in opening and dissolving parliament, appointing a government, and approving bills before they become law. He also meets weekly with Sunak, the prime minister.

However, the ability to make and pass legislation rests with politicians in an elected parliament.

Thousands of flag-carrying members of the public enjoyed another British tradition — light summer drizzle — as they gathered in the early hours along the procession route from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey. Before the coronation, the head of the U.K.’s leading republican movement, which held a protest in Trafalgar Square, was among those arrested by police.

Members of the royal family were gathered on the Buckingham Palace balcony later Saturday afternoon ahead of a series of celebratory events taking place Sunday, including a pop concert at Windsor Castle. Monday has been designated a public holiday in Britain to mark the occasion.

This article is being updated as the ceremonies continue.

Sebastian Whale

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April 28, 2023
Italy’s La Scala opens season to Ukrainian protests

MILAN (AP) — Italy’s most treasured opera house, Teatro alla Scala, opened its new season Wednesday with the Russian opera “Boris Godunov,” against the backdrop of Ukrainian protests that the cultural event is a propaganda win for the Kremlin during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, in her first cultural outing since taking office, attended La Scala’s gala premiere in Milan, joining Italian President Sergio Mattarella and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in the royal box.

A group of about 30 Ukrainians gathered outside the theater to protest highlighting Russian culture while President Vladimir Putin wages a war rooted in the denial of a unique Ukrainian culture.

They were kept across the main piazza, far from any interaction with arriving dignitaries and officials, and politics did not enter the theater.

The crowd of mostly prominent figures from Italian business, culture and politics showered the production with 13 minutes of applause. The loudest praise was reserved for Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov in the title role along with a cascade of flowers for chief conductor Riccardo Chailly.

Asked about Ukrainians’ objection to putting a spotlight on Russian culture as war rages in its tenth month, von der Leyen praised Ukrainians as “fantastic, brave and courageous people,” but said that Russian culture should not be conflated with Putin.

“We should not allow Putin to destroy all this,” von der Leyen said, referring to great Russian writers and composers, including Modest Petrovic Musorgsky, author of “Boris Godunov.” She added: “Full solidarity with our friends in Ukraine, and let’s make sure that we stand together.”

Meloni, who has maintained Italy’s support for Ukraine in defending itself against Russian aggression, also sought to draw a line between culture and politics.

“We don’t have anything against the Russian people, Russian history, Russian culture,” Meloni said. “We have something against those who have made the political choice to invade a sovereign country.”

A letter of protest from Ukraine’s consul in Milan and a petition by the Ukrainian diaspora failed to persuade the theater to drop “Boris Godunov.” La Scala officials say Chailly chose the opera as the 2022-23 season opener three years ago at Abdrazakov’s suggestion, and it was too late to substitute the production.

Abdrazakov was heralded for his sixth La Scala season premiere performance, the first in his native language, leading a mostly Russian cast along with La Scala’s chorus.

“I have sung here in Italian, in French, once in Italian, but in Russian, it is another thing entirely. And then, this opera, I adore it very much,″ Abdrazakov said backstage.

Danish director Kasper Holten’s said he sought to emphasize the opera’s message about “the cynicism of power,″ which he said remains relevant more than 150 years after it was written. In Holten’s staging, Godunov is haunted by the bloody presence of the child prince he killed to become czar, and then has to confront bloody depictions of his own cherished children, foreshadowing their own fate.

“This is sadly a reminder to us that wherever there’s a lust for power, it’s also the language of blood,″ Holten said backstage.

La Scala management have insisted that “Boris Godonov” was not propaganda for Putin. Still, Russian media widely reported on the production, focusing on officials’ dismissals of the Ukrainian protests. Russian state TV was also on hand for opening night.

In the piazza, Ukrainian protest organizers were unpersuaded by the attempt to keep politics out of culture.

“I don’t know why Italians tend to think Russian culture does not have anything to do with Russian government or the Russian people. It is all intertwined with the medieval mentality that created Putin,” said Valeriya Kalchenko, a native of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and long-time Milan resident who organized a protest.

She noted that the Polish National Opera in Warsaw canceled its scheduled April performances of the same opera just days after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, citing the suffering of the Ukrainian people. It said it would consider staging the opera in peacetime.

“They could have reacted in the same way, because La Scala at the beginning of the war had nine months to substitute the opera with an Italian opera. There is no shortage of them; it is an Italian art form,” Kalchenko said.

Other Ukrainian organizations, including a youth association, decided against physically joining the protest despite objections to the Russian production. Instead, they gathered silently, holding sheet music written by a Ukrainian composer.

Zoia Stankovska said that “muting” Russian culture during the war “would be a gesture, a sign of solidarity, with Ukrainians, and a clear message as long as the aggression is ongoing.”

La Scala management has emphasized its support of Ukraine, including a benefit concert that raised 400,000 euros ($421,000). La Scala was also the first theater in the West to cut off relations with Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, who was engaged at the Milan theater when the war broke out, after he failed to express a desire for a peaceful solution.

The gala season opener, which is held on the Dec. 7 holiday for Milan’s patron St. Ambrose, is one of the top events on the European cultural calendar, and often attracts protests aimed at grabbing the attention of Italian movers and shakers in attendance.

In that tradition, climate protesters early Wednesday threw paint on the opera house’s columns to promote more urgent actions to curb climate change. The paint was quickly removed. And union protesters set up near the Ukrainian protest, adding “no war” to their manifold slogans.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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December 7, 2022
Giorgia Meloni becomes Italy’s first female prime minister

ROME — Giorgia Meloni has been named Italy’s first female prime minister at the head of a right-wing government, after holding talks with the country’s president.

After a week of infighting which overshadowed the negotiations, Meloni’s warring coalition put forward a united front, backing Meloni to lead the country during formal talks with President Sergio Mattarella, on Friday.

Later on Friday Mattarella asked Meloni to form a government.

Meloni, after arriving for talks in a Fiat 500, accepted unconditionally, a spokesman for the president’s office said. The right-wing coalition emerged triumphant from the election, with 44 percent of the vote, led by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which took 26 percent.

But even before a government could be cobbled together, rivalry emerged inside the coalition, with allies arguing over Meloni’s unwillingness to accommodate Silvio Berlusconi’s preferred nominations in her cabinet.

At the opening of the new parliament, Berlusconi, leader of the Forza Italia party, said in a note left in public view that he found Meloni “overbearing … domineering … arrogant … offensive.”

No sooner were peacetalks concluded than Berlusconi was recorded asserting that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and affirming his friendship with Vladimir Putin.

Meloni replied saying that anyone who did not agree with her pro-Europe, pro-NATO orientation “cannot be part of the government, even if that means not forming the government.”

Despite the clashes, the right-wingers made up in order to take over as Italy’s new government. Meloni met with the President on Friday alongside her fellow leaders in the right wing bloc, Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, and Berlusconi.

Meloni is set to name her team on Friday with the new cabinet sworn in on Saturday and a vote of confidence in parliament on Tuesday.

Her team must immediately roll up their sleeves, working to deadlines including the Budget, which has to be sent to Europe for approval by the end of the month, and the Recovery Plan, the EU’s post pandemic economic aid program. Some 55 targets and milestones have to be met by the year’s end to unlock almost 20 billion euros in funding for Italy under the program.

The new government’s priority will be to tackle a cost of living crisis exacerbated by sky-high energy prices and rising interest rates, which weigh on Italy’s heavy public debt.

Caretaker prime minister Mario Draghi, who was ousted in July, has attempted to smooth the transition, pushing for a cap on energy prices in Europe and setting out the narrow margins for manoeuvre in the budget.

Draghi, in his last news conference as the head of the Italian government, said: “Italy must be at the centre of the European project with the credibility, authoritativeness and determination fitting of a great country like ours.”

But Meloni’s new team is likely to struggle to reconcile the expensive electoral promises they made on pensions and tax cuts with the economic reality. A recession is forecast for next year.

European leaders indicated they were ready to work with Meloni’s government.

At the end of the European Council in Brussels, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “We are all together as European nations within the EU and it is essential that we democracies cooperate a great deal.”

“Every time that there is a change of government because of elections, as [happens] in a democracy, it cannot change the good relations that we have with the other member states or, for example, that we have between Germany and Italy … We will continue to work with very good cooperation between the countries and within the sphere of the European Union.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said: “I am ready to work with Meloni.” Macron is visiting Rome on Sunday and Monday to meet President Mattarella and Pope Francis, and said he could meet Meloni then, too. “We will see on Monday according to institutional developments, in compliance with protocol,” he said.

Hannah Roberts

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October 21, 2022
Italy’s far-right leader formally asks for mandate to govern

ROME — Italian politician Giorgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, said Friday that she and her allies have asked the nation’s president to give her the mandate to form what would be Italy‘s first far-right-led government since the end of World War II.

Meloni and her campaign allies met for about 10 minutes with President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinal presidential palace. She emerged to tell reporters that the coalition had unanimously indicated to Mattarella that she deserved the mandate to govern.

The palace later announced that Mattarella had summoned Meloni back, by herself, to meet with the president late Friday afternoon.

At that meeting, the president could decide Meloni has assembled a viable government and invite her and her ministers to swear in the next day. He could also give her the mandate to try to form a government and some time to report back to him on her progress.

If Meloni, 45, succeeds, she would be the first woman to become Italian premier.

Obtaining the premiership would cap a remarkably quick rise for the Brothers of Italy party that Meloni co-founded in December 2012 and which in its first years was considered a fringe movement on the right.

“We have indicated myself as the person who should be mandated to form the new government,” Meloni said, flanked by her two main, sometimes troublesome, right-wing allies — Matteo Salvini and former Premier Silvio Berlusconi. “We are ready and we want to move forward in the shortest possible time.”

She cited urgent problems “at both national and international level,” apparent references to soaring energy prices afflicting households and businesses and the war in Ukraine, which has seen European Union members divided over strategy amid worries about gas supplies during the approaching winter.

Berlusconi and Salvini stayed silent during Meloni’s brief remarks to reporters. But at one point Berlusconi raised his eyebrows and looked behind her head at Salvini as Meloni spoke.

Both men are longtime admirers of Russian leader Vladimir Putin; Meloni staunchly backs Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion. Those differences could make coalition rule challenging.

Berlusconi, a three-time premier, has been chafing over the election victory by Meloni’s party. The Brothers of Italy took 26%, while Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the anti-migrant League of Salvini, snagged just over 8% apiece in an election on Sept. 25 that saw record low turnout.

In 2018, in the previous election for Parliament, Meloni’s party took just over 4%.

Still, while her forces are Parliament’s largest, Meloni needs her two allies in order to command a solid majority in the legislature.

Berlusconi, who fancies himself a rare leader on the world stage, recently derided her as “arrogant” in written comments, apparently after Meloni refused to make a lawmaker who is one of the media mogul’s closest advisers a minister.

Earlier this week in a meeting with his lawmakers he expressed sympathy for Putin’s motivation for invading Ukraine. In that conversation, which was recorded and leaked to Italian news agency LaPresse, he also bragged that Putin had sent him bottles of vodka for his 86th birthday last month and he gave the Russian bottles of wine while the two exchanged sweetly worded notes.

In response to Berlusconi’s comments that were also derogatory about Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy, Meloni insisted that anyone joining her government must be solidly in sync with the West in opposing Putin’s war. If that meant her government couldn’t be formed, Meloni said, she’d take that risk.

Salvini has at times also questioned the wisdom of tough Western sanctions against Russia. A fellow lawmaker in Salvini’s League party who was recently elected president of the lower Chamber of Deputies has publicly expressed doubts about continuing the measures.

Outgoing Premier Mario Draghi’s national pandemic unity coalition collapsed in July, after Salvini, Berlusconi and populist 5-Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte refused to back his government in a confidence vote. That prompted Mattarella to dissolve parliament and pave the way for elections some six months early.

While final efforts to form the new government were underway, Draghi was in Brussels, attending the final day of a European Council summit, grappling with ways to deal with higher energy prices.

On Thursday, Mattarella received opposition leaders, who raised concerns that Meloni, who campaigned with a “God, homeland, family” agenda, would seek to erode abortion rights and roll back rights such as same-sex civil unions.

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Giada Zampano contributed reporting.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Italian politics: https://apnews.com/hub/giorgia-meloni

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October 21, 2022
Holocaust survivor opens Senate as far-right to govern Italy

ROME — Italy’s Fascist past and its future governed by a party with neo-fascist roots came to an emotional head Thursday when a Holocaust survivor presided over the first seating of Parliament since general elections last month.

Liliana Segre, a 92-year-old senator-for-life, opened the session in the upper chamber, subbing in for a more senior life senator who couldn’t attend. Her speech formally launched the sequence of events that is expected to bring the Brothers of Italy party, which won the most votes in Sept. 25 elections and has its origins in a neo-fascist movement, to head Italy’s first far-right-led government since the end of World War II.

Speaking to the Senate, Segre marveled at the “symbolic value” of the coincidence of her role and the historic moment that Italy is witnessing. She noted that she was presiding over the Senate as Italy soon marks the 100th anniversary of the March on Rome, which brought Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini to power, and as war rages once again in Europe with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Today, I am particularly moved by the role that fate holds for me,” Segre told the hushed chamber. “In this month of October, which marks the centenary of the March on Rome that began the Fascist dictatorship, it falls to me to temporarily assume the presidency of this temple of democracy, which is the Senate of the Republic.”

Segre was one of the few Italian children who survived deportation to a Nazi death camp, and she has spent recent decades telling Italian schoolchildren about the Holocaust. Her advocacy led President Sergio Mattarella to name her a senator-for-life in 2018 as Italy marked the anniversary of the introduction of fascist-era racial laws discriminating against Jews.

In her speech, Segre choked up as she recalled that those laws forbade Jewish children like her from attending school.

“It is impossible for me not to feel a kind of vertigo, remembering that that same little girl who on a day like this in 1938, disconsolate and lost, was forced by the racist laws to leave her elementary school bench empty. And that, by some strange fate, that same girl today finds herself on the most prestigious bench, in the Senate.”

Her emotional remarks brought the 200 senators to their feet in applause, including the Brothers of Italy delegation headed by Ignazio La Russa. La Russa, who once proudly showed off his collection of Mussolini memorabilia, was later elected Senate speaker.

The Brothers of Italy, headed by Giorgia Meloni, has its origins in the Italian Social Movement, or MSI, which was founded in 1946 by former Mussolini officials and drew fascist sympathizers into its ranks. It remained a small far-right party until the 1990s, when it became the National Alliance and worked to distance itself from its neo-fascist past.

Meloni was a member of the youth branches of MSI and the National Alliance and founded Brothers of Italy in 2012, keeping the tricolor flame symbol of the MSI in her party logo.

During the campaign, amid Democratic warnings that she represented a danger to democracy, Meloni insisted that the Italian right had “ handed fascism over to history for decades now, ” and had condemned racial laws and the suppression of democracy.

Segre didn’t refer to the party by name in her speech, but she said Italian voters had expressed their will at the ballot box.

“The people have decided. It is the essence of democracy,” Segre said. “The majority emerging from the ballot has the right to govern, and the minority has the similarly fundamental obligation to be in the opposition.”

Looking ahead to the upcoming legislature, she called for a civilized debate that does not degenerate into hateful speech and respects the Italian Constitution.

She cited in particular the Constitution’s Article 3, which states that all Italian citizens are equal under the law “without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion or personal or social condition.”

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October 13, 2022