Commentary
Meloni presents an alternative reality of employed and healthy Italians
Data has been reduced to politics and manipulation. Meloni’s press conference on the budget cooks the books to create accomplishments where there are none.
It was supposed to be a celebration, but all we got was the slides. It’s a shame if you missed Tuesday’s press conference where Giorgia Meloni intended to present her budget law, which still doesn’t exist in text form. Meloni wanted to celebrate two years in power by showing 59 slides of “historical records” achieved by her government. The meeting gave off some of that vintage Renzi vibe. We still remember him at the Chigi Palace, in his customary white shirt, conjuring up a magical fantasy world of numbers. Since his time, the story has changed but the propaganda remains the same.
Meloni does not love press conferences with questions from journalists. The one on the Cutro security bill hit hard. That is, indeed, where one should start if one were to make a summary of this government’s work. “Colleagues, this is unprofessional!” Sechi complained on TV later; he was Renzi’s spokesman back in the day, now a newspaper editor going from one talk show to the next. The fact is that the journalists were doing their job. But the government was in a petulant mood.
The same thing happened to Economy Minister Giorgetti last week, but with much less of a splash. Giorgetti was making announcements about the budget law, and he was unable to give an answer to the journalists who highlighted the difference between the government's announcements and reality when it comes to funds for healthcare (€900 million for 2025, not €3.2 billion). He would issue an official note after the meeting to clarify matters – which only raised more questions.
In short, will there be more or less funding for health care? At the press conference, Giorgetti claimed that they would “keep it unchanged as a percentage of GDP.” For 2025, the total allocation is 6.3 percent of GDP. But then, how can one arrive at the fantastically high figures touted by the government in slide 39 on Tuesday? By adding up the funds from previous years, that’s how. Therein lies the source of the confusion, one might say. Data has been reduced to politics and manipulation.
Perhaps there is a way to figure out where the truth lies. The real “record high” in the healthcare field was the rate of patients foregoing treatment in the national health service recorded in 2023. According to the Civic Health Report published on Tuesday by Cittadinanzattiva, it takes an average of 468 days to get an eye exam, 480 days to get an oncology checkup and 526 days for a Doppler ECG. Under such conditions, as many as 4.5 million people have foregone treatment. This means that it is not enough to allocate the funds, assuming they exist in the first place. The problem lies in addressing the devastating problems created by the corporatization of health care and understaffing. No surprise that the government chooses to keep quiet about those “record highs.”
On Tuesday, in a video addressed to the citizens, Prime Minister Meloni – who wishes to be called by the masculine form of the title, a gender-bending oddity in a government more than willing to entertain the far-right's scaremongering on “gender” – rattled off the litany of “her” supposed economic successes. On the same day came the refutation: according to the International Monetary Fund, GDP will increase by 0.7 percent in 2024, while Confindustria estimates 0.8%. Not the 1% claimed by the government.
In slide 5, Meloni & Co. repeat the claim that in 2023, Italy’s GDP was “the highest above the EU average.” Not true: ISTAT revised it downward to 0.7 percent. Spain's was 2.7 percent, while Portugal grew by 2.2 percent, and Greece also performed better, if we look at the Mediterranean countries alone.
The third slide talked about “Record employment,” claiming there were 800,000 more people employed on permanent contracts. This is actually the sum of two years of employment data. There is no mention that this represents a record high in terms of poor, low-wage employment. The 2024 ISTAT annual report confirms that the employment rate in Italy remains the lowest in Europe (62.3%), on average 15% below Germany, 6% below France and 3% below Spain.
A masterpiece of spin can be found on slide 17, where Meloni talks about the record female employment rate (53.5 percent). What her team doesn’t say is that this rate is affected by the increase in part-time work among women: four times higher than men. Nor are they willing to admit that Italy has a record of involuntary part-time work (i.e. one is forced to work less than they would want). According to ISTAT, this was 57.9 percent in 2022; in France it is less than half that number. In 2023, more than half of these workers said they would like to work more: 9 out of 10 of them are in the South.
Among its “achievements,” the Meloni government also lists the “elimination” of the “citizenship income” (slide 4). They don’t say that 2023 saw a record in terms of absolute poverty (5.7 million), and that next year will be even worse. They completely ignore the effects of the €1.1 billion cut: 600,000 families lost the benefit. Even mentioning poverty has gone out of fashion. Same with the 19 consecutive months of declining industrial production. On slide 36, there is no mention of this – another “record” number they left out.
And what are they on about with the claim that they gave “more value to universities and research” (slide 54)? There is no mention of the cuts in the fund for universities. In a document on the Scienze in Rete website, 58 scientific societies denounced the cut of €173 million and the non-allocation of a further €340 million. The denunciation led to a protest organized at La Sapienza University in Rome on Friday. Some people don’t want to stay on Planet Meloni, prisoners of the slides.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/manovra-le-slide-al-posto-della-realta-fake-video-e-record-storici-inventati on 2024-10-23