Muslim candidates expose right-wing splits in Italy’s Vigevano local election

ROME: A local election in the northern Italian city of Vigevano has highlighted differences within Italy’s ruling right-wing camp over immigration, while also reflecting the country’s changing social makeup.

Vigevano, an industrial city surrounded by factories and rice fields, has a population of 62,000. 15 per cent of residents are foreign nationals, including many from Egypt and Romania, while many others are naturalised Italians or second-generation immigrants. The city, once a stronghold of the Communist Party, is currently governed by the League, the far-right junior partner in Italy’s ruling coalition.

The League’s national leader Matteo Salvini has said citizenship should be revoked for second-generation immigrants who commit crimes. But in Vigevano, the party’s mayoral candidate Riccardo Ghia, a jeweller, drew attention after including two Muslim candidates on his list of prospective councillors in an effort to win support from immigrant communities.

Candidates draw attention in campaign

One of the candidates, 20-year-old Italian-Egyptian Hagar Haggag, said she had faced numerous insults and threats after her candidacy was announced. She said the hostile reaction was mainly linked to her wearing a headscarf. Haggag told AFP she had "never felt racism" in the local section of the League, and noted that the city’s former League mayor had allowed a Muslim prayer hall to open in a disused hangar in 2022.

She also said she entered the race because she wanted to "put an end to the left-wing cliche that Muslim women are ignorant". She is studying diplomacy and is considering a political future beyond Vigevano, possibly even in Egypt.

The second Muslim candidate on Ghia’s list, Ibrahim Hussein, is a spokesman for the local prayer hall. He presented his candidacy "in the name of Allah". Hussein also wrote on Facebook that he chose to run for the League because he sees himself as "a real example of integration".

On the final day of campaigning in Vigevano’s central square on Friday, Ghia said he "does not look at whether people are Muslim or Buddhist", adding that whoever "respects the rules is a citizen with full rights".

Divisions within the right

Italy is preparing for national elections next year, and the political influence of second-generation immigrants is growing in an increasingly multi-ethnic country. Against that backdrop, the League’s national leadership said it was distancing itself from the candidates in Vigevano, where voting took place on Sunday and Monday.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, however, is backing the candidates, while another coalition partner, Forza Italia, which is described as more open on immigration and integration, is supporting a different mayoral list.

The divisions on the right could benefit Roberto Vannacci, a former general who left the League to launch the more radical far-right party Futuro Nazionale. Vannacci visited Vigevano on May 17 and delivered a speech described as containing anti-immigrant rhetoric. The speech came a day after a young Italian man of Moroccan heritage with mental health problems drove his car into pedestrians in Modena, injuring eight people.

Futuro Nazionale’s local candidate, lawyer Furio Suvilla, said his programme centres on security. He has called for the army to be deployed against groups of young people gathering near the station and wants the Muslim prayer hall shut down. He also said he believed he could "pick up quite a few League voters".

Broader social change

Sociologist Maurizio Ambrosini of Milan’s Statale university said candidates with foreign origins are still relatively uncommon in Italian elections, where immigration is a more recent phenomenon than in France or Germany. He said several right-wing parties "are trying to attract candidates with immigrant origins" and added that "many naturalised migrants tend towards the right".

Another candidate in Vigevano, 23-year-old health sector worker Sabrine Hamrouni, is running for the centre-left. Her father moved from Tunisia to Vigevano in the 1990s to work in construction. Hamrouni said, "I was born here. I have always lived here but I am still a foreigner," and added that she wants to make Vigevano.