 Italy is set to hold general elections on September 25th. This follows the resignation of Mario Draghi in July. The election comes after years of political uncertainty and the rule of very diverse coalitions. What are the conditions that led to the resignation of Draghi and what kind of challenges does Italy face at this point? In June 2022, so a couple of months ago, Mario Draghi, the Prime Minister of Italy, decided to resign because he didn't have the support of every party anymore. We remember that in 2021, when Mario Draghi was chosen by the President of the Republic, Sergio Matarella, to be the Prime Minister, he built a government of national unity. So we had to support of practically every single party in the parliament. This didn't, in a rhetorical way, they presented themselves, both for the five-star movement, didn't support the government anymore, and it was much more like a political calculation about the general situation than very specifically on a political point. So in June, the five-star movement decided not to vote the confirmation of Mario Draghi. Mario Draghi reached, nevertheless, the majority, but he decided to resign because he said there is no national unity anymore. So the general elections were called because of that. So in three months, we had to organize all the elections, that the early elections of September 2025. And it was a both-all for the little parties, which are not represented in parliament, very difficult also to work on that. For example, the Union of Popularity, the Popular Union, the People's Union, without representation in the parliament, had to collect 60,000 signatures in 10 days all over Italy. It was really a hard work. They reached, and now there is like a political campaign, that electoral campaign that is showing how less politics matters during these days. For example, as soon as Mario Draghi resigned, the war in Ukraine wasn't a topic anymore in the medias. As soon as Mario Draghi resigned, social issues were not in the newspapers anymore. So it was like very focused. All the debate is about what candidate, what clientel connections will be and will go in the parliament. So how are we living the situation in general in Italy? I mean, the crisis that started in 2008 with the crisis in the US, the subprime crisis, and deepened with the public debt crisis in 2011, we are again with the pandemic and the war in a very deep crisis. Italy is facing 10% inflation. Italy is facing, with the increasing of energy costs, huge problematic for the both-all little companies that announced already that they will stop the production. So we have like, and the Italian industrial system is based on a little little industry. So we have a situation that is like increasing unemployment. The wages are like stagnant since since years. So like the social reality, the economic reality for the people is really problematic. And in this context, elections are called. So it will be also very difficult for the next government, even if far right or a center left government, it will be very, very hard and very, yeah, very hard to respond to the people's needs. Ahead of the election, the number of political blocks have emerged with their own ideological positions. Who are the main contenders in this election and what do they stand for? Yeah, we can like define the blocks presenting themselves in the elections like there are four of them. First of all, the right for right coalition with Fratelli d'Italia, the brother of Italy from Giorgio Maloni, the strongest party, it's like a neo-fascist party which will reach the highest percentage, the highest consensus. They have the coalition with La Lega from Matteo Salvini and for Italy of Silvio Berlusconi. And like the polls are saying that they reach more or less 43, 44 percent. Of course they have like a very, how to say, a very repressive or very authoritarian program with both all against migrants, against civil rights, against homosexuality and so on and so on. So we have like this part of the program that is very strong, very repressive, very authoritarian. But on the other side, we have the impression we speak a lot in Italy about like the rebirth of fascism that fascism will come back. And I think it is not true. First of all, because historically we cannot compare the situation we are living today with the situation we were living during the rise of fascism. And secondly, because I think that the industrial politics, the economic politics of the far right of Giorgio Maloni is deeply neoliberal. They want to eliminate social assistance for poor people. They do not want to introduce a minimum wage. They also followed like the indications of the capital association to deepen the taxes and so on and so on. So it is very a clear neoliberal program of the far right combined with like a repressive arm on what is concerning migrant rights, women rights, civil rights. Then we have like the Democratic Party. We can say that the Democratic Party is more or less similar to the Democratic Party of the United States. They are calling themselves the continuity of the Mario Draghi agenda. So they are above all making a campaign to say that the people have to vote the Democratic Party to stop the advance of fascism in Italy. So their political program is really just in differentiation and in opposition with the fascist. And then we have the Five Star Movement. The Five Star Movement in 2008 and 2018 reached the highest percentage, the highest consensus with 33, 34 percent of the vote. They crashed a lot because they made like alliances with the far right. They made alliances with the Democratic Party and they presented themselves always against the old style politics. So they presented themselves as something new. But when they governed, they made one measure that was very important for the people, for working poor people, that was like the social assistance. And so they will have, I think a consensus above all in the south, south from part of Italy, where working poor people are a lot, where like precarity is much more expanded than in the north. They will have a consensus that it's still important. But in the average, in the national average, they will maybe reach more or less 14 percent. So they will lose a lot. And at the end, there is like the alternative, the only alternative we can present, it's the alternative from the left. There is the coalition called People's Union around Luigi da Magistris. He was the former mayor of the third city of Italy, of Naples, with a very clear program, a social and popular program against war and against the militarization of Italian society. For the introduction of a minimum wage of at least 10 percent and higher taxes on the profits of above all the energy companies, then for real green transition, real green transition, that means that the money that is coming from the EU, the next generation EU, that they will not distribute it just in the pockets of the privates and the private companies presenting themselves like as green. This is greenwashing what they are doing. But we have to force them. This is the message of People's Union. We have to strengthen and force in the public sector for having a real green transition. So we have to invest in public transport, in public companies and above all also in the health system and in the school system that is really, really, really precarious today in Italy. The left wing coalition Union Populare has sought to present a different agenda before the people of the country. What does the bloc seek to achieve in this election? What are its slogans and what have been its experiences in approaching the people with this radical agenda? Yeah, the coalition of the People's Union, Union Populare, it's a coalition of like four different realities. This is first of all, a popular power to the people, an organization that was born five years ago as a sum of all these popular initiatives, the people's houses, the associations fighting in a very anti-capitalistic and anti-imperialistic from anti-capitalistic and the anti-imperialistic point of view. Then we have Refondazione Comunista that is like the continuity of the Communist Party of Italy after 1992. There is DEMA, the Democrazia and the Autonomia that is like the political organization of the frontmen. We have Luigi de Magistris, which is above all linked on like local level with city councils and so on, like progressive city councils. And then at least we have like, at the end we have Manifesta that is like a parliamentary group of four parliamentarians, which who were before they left, they were from the five-star movements. But when they made the coalition with the Salvini in 2018, they decided to exit the five-star movement and build a new parliamentary group. And these four organizations, these four political forces decided to join the forces during this campaign. First of all, because the time for making a political campaign autonomously for the groups was not possible. Secondly, because of course we have like, consensus on the program, like the four points I was presenting before is like the program everyone was pushing forward. And so we are making this campaign above all in the streets. This is also something we have to highlight, like the TV presence of the other organizations, of the other parties is very high. We do not have the material possibility to have this presence in the TV. We do not have the material possibility to make a campaign with a lot of money. So our political campaign, our electoral campaign is among the people. We are in the streets. We are speaking to the streets. We are making phone calls. So it's really door-to-door and grassroots way of making an electoral campaign. It is very hard because, as I said at the beginning, it is the most unpolitical campaign we ever had in Italy because the topics just disappeared. No one is speaking anymore about the war. No one is speaking about the social condition of the working class. And this is a way we can reach these topics by being there by the people with the people around the people and pushing forward our campaign with them.