FdI’s impatience with Schillaci is growing. Gemmato is becoming increasingly agitated.

We’re not quite at the Boris stage of “get rid of this one,” but within Fratelli d’Italia, impatience with Health Minister Orazio Schillaci is growing ever stronger. The reason? The Health Minister’s attendance at the latest Fatto Quotidiano party at La Versiliana. Not so much the appearance itself, of course, as the content of his speech. When asked whether the Covid commission was a useful tool, the government representative replied: “I believe that Covid was a national tragedy and that Italians do not particularly like to remember what happened, because perhaps someone in their family died, or someone suffered, or someone was hospitalised. I believe – and I say this as a politician – that it is a topic that does not win votes”. Although the minister then added, as if backtracking: “I am not a Member of Parliament. There is now a committee of inquiry. The Covid crisis was a tragedy and there are ways in which, should it happen again, we can improve on what went wrong. It is in everyone’s interest.” In short, the remarks did not go down particularly well with Meloni’s senior figures, not least because it is FdI itself that has taken up the cause and is at the forefront of driving the work of the inquiry committee forward. The most prominent figure in this affair is the committee’s chairman, Marco Lisei, who has engaged in a veritable duel with former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte (the second hearing was due to take place yesterday but was not convened). Equally strong have been the statements made by FdI’s parliamentary group leader in the Chamber of Deputies, Galeazzo Bignami. So much so that the content of the committee hearings, as well as a certain sensitivity regarding establishing who was responsible for events during that period, have been at the centre of a press campaign spearheaded by newspapers such as Libero and Il Tempo. It is therefore understandable why this notion that ‘talking about Covid doesn’t win votes’ has raised more than a few eyebrows. In reality, even the relationship between Meloni and Schillaci had not been idyllic in the past. The Prime Minister had, in fact, taken a dim view (and made this clear to the minister) of the ministry’s U-turn regarding the appointment of certain members of the NITAG vaccine committee, who were accused of holding anti-vaccine views. At the time, Schillaci revoked the appointments and Meloni said the decision had not been agreed upon. Relations with other political parties have also been far from smooth, given that both the League and Forza Italia opposed the reform of general practitioners, which was later incorporated into a more limited agreement to establish community care centres.

This new front in the Covid battle, therefore, risks driving the parties even further apart. And should the centre-right win again and remain in government – with FdI making strong headway – the current undersecretary Marcello Gemmato, who is very close to the Prime Minister (with whom he spends his holidays in Puglia), is being put forward as a strong candidate for the post of Health Minister. After all, Schillaci had said as much at the latest Il Foglio party in Venice: “I’ve never been bored in my life and I’m sure I won’t be bored next year either. I’ll always find something to do.”