Ventotene, Meloni boasts of having displaced the opposition but should the prime minister divide or unite the country?

You may like it or not but the Manifesto of Ventotene, which in recent days has ended up at the centre of political controversy, is indisputably a symbol and a flag of Europeanism, not by chance celebrated in unsuspecting times by the President Sergio Mattarella. Decontextualizing it and extrapolating inevitably dated parts is a clumsy operation that reveals all its instrumentalism. This is what the Prime Minister did in the Senate Giorgia Meloni who then showed herself proud of having thus surprised and disoriented the centre-left opposition. It matters little to know why Meloni behaved like this: to cover the divisions of the majority on Riarm Eu? To blunt the attacks of the League? To reinvigorate her own? It matters little because the real point is another and raises a question much more relevant than the controversies of these days and that is: a Prime Minister, especially when she speaks in Parliament, must divide or unite Italians? Must she be a partisan or represent the synthesis of the country's orientations? Meloni, and it is not the first time that it happens to her, seems to favor the role of political leader over the institutional functions of head of government. She is free to do so just as she is free not to share the Ventotene Manifesto, but not to exploit it and use it to divide. Meloni can say and do what she wants but, never giving up being a partisan even in the exercise of her institutional functions, she will never become a stateswoman and will never be perceived as such. Party leader and not stateswoman: if that is what she wants, she should not be surprised by the criticism. But that is not what Italians expect from a prime minister.