Minority org worried about Italian election result
Trieste, 26 September - The Slovenian Cultural and Economic Association (SKGZ), an umbrella of the Slovenian ethnic minority in Italy, is concerned about the election outcome, especially because the post-fascist Brothers of Italy have made significant gains. It is however happy that Senator Tatjana Rojc, a member of the minority, has been re-elected.
The victory of the Brothers of Italy has turned the right-wing bloc towards far-right politics, the organisation wrote in a statement on Monday.
The party "does not promote liberal-conservative principles, its outlook is nationalistically exclusive and strongly anti-European and rather extreme in terms of its anti-migrant stance".
Although the party has changed names in the past decades, its world view has not significantly changed, and its representatives in Friuli Venezia Gulia, which is home to the Slovenian minority, have been always systematically against the autochthonous Slovenian minority seeing minority rights as "an unnecessary privilege".
SKGZ believes the time ahead will not be "a time of growth, coexistence and intercultural dialogue, but a time of declining respect for the protection of the Slovenian ethnic community in Italy".
Still, it is happy that Rojc was re-elected to the upper chamber of parliament, where she will continue to "represent in Rome both the Slovenian ethnic community and members of the majority nation who identify with the values of social solidarity and democratic social development".