(ANSA) - An Italian government party has stirred outrage by using the word "mongrel" to describe the possible entry into politics of a Tunisian-born ex-model married to one of Italy's business leaders.
La Padania, party daily of the Northern League, on Tuesday ran a story on a centre-left party's call for former top model and TV celebrity Afef Jnifen to help win next year's general election.
Afef, 42, is married to Marco Tronchetti Provera, head of tyre and cable maker Pirelli and telecoms giant Telecom Italia - and also Premier Silvio Berlusconi's only commercial TV rival.
The League paper headlined the piece "mongrel candidacies" and quipped that Afef's slogan would be "let's mongrelise Italy" - a reference to Senate Speaker Marcello Pera's recent warning that Europe could be "mongrelised" by predominantly Muslim immigration.
The Italian opposition leaped to Afef's defence on Tuesday, praising her stand against Pera and saying she had the brains to make an "ideal" candidate - although some women MPs said Italian politics should open up to all kinds of women, not just "glamorous" ones. Even one of Berlusconi's smaller allies, the post-Craxi New Socialist Party, criticised La Padania's headline as
"unacceptable."
The premier's Forza Italia party said it would welcome Afef as an opponent but warned against "exploiting skin colour" to score political points. The League, meanwhile, stuck up for La Padania by saying that "you can't become a politician by pure chance or through an influential marriage."
Pera's speech last week was sharply criticised by most of the Italian press as well as by prominent liberals including Afef. Tuesday was the second time in a few days that the League daily had targeted the prominent Tunisian. At the weekend La Padania slammed her for acting as MC at a rally of the small Catholic-oriented UDEUR party, which is led by Clemente Mastella, a former minister in the now-defunct but long-dominant Christian Democrat party. "Lady Tronchetti Provera comes to Mastella's court. The Christian Democrat Clemente gets a Muslim woman to present his party," it said.
During the UDEUR conference, Mastella floated the idea of Afef running as an independent centre-left candidate. On Tuesday, several women MPs said she should contest Pera's Tuscan seat. Afef has said she was flattered by the UDEUR's offer but deflected speculation about a possible run, saying only "my husband doesn't want me to." The row has been given added spice by the fact that Tronchetti Provera, Afef's husband, is the main backer of small TV channel La 7.
Italy's seventh terrestrial broadcaster is squeezed between Berlusconi's three-channel Mediaset empire and state-controlled RAI, which also has three channels. The League is the third-biggest party in the media magnate's four-party House of Liberties coalition. Some of its more outspoken members have called for the Italian navy to sink immigrant boats. Others have said Italy's Muslim community should be forced to leave the country. A League mayor recently banned the Muslim headscarf. League extremists have even called for pig's urine to be sprinkled onto building sites where mosques are set to rise.
