Liberation Day a moment of 'rediscovered harmony' - Meloni

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 25 - Premier Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday called for Liberation Day celebrations to be a moment of "rediscovered national harmony" after days of heated debate over the relationship of Italy's right wing with its Fascist past.
    In an open letter to Corriere della Sera, the Premier and leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) shared "some reflections" that she hoped might "contribute to making this anniversary a moment of rediscovered national harmony, in which the celebration of our newfound freedom helps us understand and strengthen Italy's role in the world as an indispensable bulwark of democracy." "I do this," she added, "with the serenity of one in whom these reflections matured within the ranks of her own political affiliation some 30 years ago", continued Meloni, adding that "the parties representing the right in Parliament declared their incompatibility with any nostalgia for fascism" many years ago.
    "The fundamental fruit of April 25 was, and remains without doubt, the affirmation of democratic values, which had been trampled by Fascism and which we find carved into the Republican Constitution," said the Premier.
    "The patient negotiation aimed at establishing the principles and rules of our nascent liberal democracy - an outcome not unanimously desired by all components of the Resistance - resulted in a text (the Constitution) that set out to unite and not to divide," she added.
    On Monday Italian Partisans group ANPI urged the premier to disassociate herself from Fascism after allegedly failing to do so since leading the right-wing to government in September 2022.
    The call came against the backdrop of controversy involving Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa, a top FdI exponent, in relation to his criticism of a Partisan attack in Rome that triggered the Ardeatine Caves reprisal massacre, statement on Thursday that the postwar Constitution does not contain the word 'antifascism' and decision to spend most of Liberation Day commemorating anti-Communist hero Jan Palach in Prague instead of visiting Nazi atrocity sites in Italy. (ANSA).