The right-wing alliance of Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has secured another regional election victory, this time in northwest Liguria, an outcome that reinforces the coalition’s political momentum.
According to results announced on Tuesday, conservative candidate Marco Bucci, mayor of Liguria’s capital Genoa, won the region’s presidency with 48.8 percent of the vote, narrowly defeating center-left rival and former minister Andrea Orlando, who received 47.4 percent of the vote.
The win comes as Meloni celebrates two years in office with a strong lead in the national polls, and it is the latest in a series of regional election victories, reported the Reuters news agency. Two more regional votes are due to be held next month.
The result dealt another blow to Italy’s divided opposition, which had hoped a victory would help solidify a fractious alliance between the center-left Democratic Party, or PD, and the left-leaning Five Star Movement, or M5S.
Although defeated, PD emerged as the single largest party in Liguria, with 28.5 percent of the vote, while M5S performed particularly poorly, at 4.5 percent. Meloni’s Brothers of Italy secured around 15 percent, surpassing its right-wing allies the League and Forza Italia.
In a social media post, Meloni said: “Congratulations to Marco#Bucci for his victory.”
Meloni’s bloc now controls 14 out of Italy’s 20 regions and has accumulated several wins since taking office, with its only loss to the center-left opposition coming in a close contest in Sardinia in February.
The election win follows a challenging week for Meloni’s government, which was forced to revise its list of “safe” countries for migrant returns to 19 nations, after a Rome court ruling threatened to undermine its migrant processing agreement with Albania.
The government also faced criticism for commemorating fascist soldiers who fought at El Alamein, marking the World War II battle’s 82nd anniversary.
The Defense Ministry posted on social media that the troops who participated “sacrificed their lives for our freedom”, characterizing the Italian and Nazi defeat by allied forces in North Africa as “heroic and tragic”.
The battle of El Alamein took place in 1942 when Italy was under the rule of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
The comments drew condemnation from opposition groups, with the Five Star Movement saying it was “inopportune” to suggest Italian forces had fought for freedom.
The Liguria vote, conducted on Sunday and Monday, was prompted by the resignation of Giovanni Toti, the conservative regional president, who stepped down in July following his arrest on corruption charges.
Toti denied wrongdoing but reached a plea bargain to resolve the case against him. Under Italian law, plea bargaining does not constitute an admission of guilt but requires approval from a pre-trial judge.