"Italian voters gave a clear mandate to the far-right party"

"Italian voters gave a clear mandate to the far-right party"

Italians are on course to elect the country’s first female prime minister and the first government led by the far-right since the end of World War II. Meloni called for unity to help deal with the country's many problems.

"If we are called to govern this nation, we will do it for all Italians, with the aim of uniting the people, to focus on what unites us and not on what divides us. We will not betray your trust," Meloni told reporters, Reuters informs.

According to exit polls published by RAI television, in the parliamentary elections held yesterday in Italy, the coalition of right-wing parties led by the Brothers of Italy, headed by Meloni, won between 41 and 45 percent of the vote.

An exit poll by state broadcaster RAI showed a bloc of conservative parties, which also includes Matteo Salvini's League and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, won enough votes to secure control of both houses of parliament.

According to RAI, the right-wing bloc will get between 227 and 257 of the 400 seats in the Lower House of Parliament and between 111 and 131 seats in the 200-member Senate. If the election results are confirmed, Meloni, as the leader of the largest party in the winning alliance, will have the chance to become Italy's first female prime minister, at the head of the far right-wing government since World War II, according to Reuters.

Meloni and her allies, according to the British agency, face a difficult list of challenges, including rising energy prices, the war in Ukraine and a renewed slowdown in the eurozone's third-largest economy.

"We have to remember that we are not at the end point, we are at the starting point. From tomorrow we have to prove our worth," Meloni told supporters of her party. According to the agency, it has pledged to support Western policy towards Ukraine and will not take risks with Italy's fragile finances.

European capitals will scrutinize her early moves, given her Eurosceptic past and the ambivalent attitude of her allies towards Russia, according to Reuters.

Although Maloni's alliance is projected to have a good majority in both the upper and lower houses of parliament, its members have divergent views on several issues that may be difficult to agree on.

Salvini, for example, questions Western sanctions on Russia, and he and Berlusconi have often expressed admiration for its leader, Vladimir Putin. They also have differing views on how to deal with rising energy bills and have made a number of promises, including tax cuts and pension reform.

By contrast, Meloni's main ally in the centre-right coalition, as the coalition is officially called, had a disastrous night.

Matteo Salvini's League won, according to current results, about nine percent of the vote, which is a big drop compared to more than 17 percent four years ago, while Meloni overtook the League in its traditional stronghold in the north of the country.

The third member of that coalition, the Forza Italia party of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, won around eight percent of the vote, so the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party is dominant in the coalition.

Along with the traditional center-right coalition and the center-left coalition, the populist Five Star Movement won 16 percent of the vote, while the centrist coalition around the Action party won seven percent of the vote.

After more than half of the ballots have been counted, the Brothers of Italy have 26 percent of the vote, a huge progress from just four percent in the previous parliamentary elections in 2018.

Meloni will take over from Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank who turned Rome towards the center of EU decision-making, relying on close ties with Paris and Berlin.