Zulvian Ramadhan Putra
Head of Division, Media and Publication Division FPCI Chapter UPN Veteran Jakarta
A politician must have the ability to persuade, impress, or distinguish themselves from the other candidate. If they don’t, they will be overlooked by the people and unsurprisingly lose the election. This is where the political positioning takes action for a politician to gain exposure and to express themselves to be different from the other candidates and conquer their primary goal: win the election. According to Rhenald Khasali (1998), political positioning is the communication strategy to infiltrate the voters’ mind and makes them think about our advantages rather than other candidates in an associative way.
Political positioning is also the means to distinguish one candidate from another candidate and there are six ways to achieve that. The first one is the positioning has to be something important, second it has to be distinctive, the third one is it has to be superior, the fourth one is communicable, the fifth one is preemptive, and the last but not least is the positioning must consider the number of voters that will vote for the candidate. If candidates followed these steps for positioning, hope they will win a strong positioning in voters’ minds.
GIORGIA MELONI AND FRATELLI D’ITALIA POSITIONING
According to the data in 2022, Kirby (2022) stated that the Fratelli d’Italia Party which is led by Giorgia Meloni won the elections by 26% of the vote. Thus, Giorgia Meloni became the first woman to become the Italian Prime Minister and immediately formed the government in her name. Giorgia Meloni and her Fratelli d’Italia party won the election by bringing the far-right spirit in contrast to their center-left counterparts, the Partito Democratico party (Voce & Clarke, 2022).
The first way to make political positioning possible is to choose something important in order to create a party’s or candidate’s identity. Giorgia Meloni and her party give their priority to the Italian people and during their campaign, Giorgia Meloni always brought up “Italy and Italians First” and merged herself with the far-right values such as anti-LGBT and halting immigration.
The second way to achieve political positioning is to have something distinct to be the party or candidate’s identity. From what Giorgia Meloni has done with her party, she distinguishes herself and her party from their counterparts by being the far-right party and solid opposition to the previous government. She’s bold on conservative views such as favoring pro-family policy, lowering taxes, anti-immigration, anti-abortion, and anti-LGBT and after her party won the election and she became the PM, it is most likely she will continue favoring those views. If we take a look at what Partitio Democratico values, they are a pure center-left party and they support LGBT rights and pro-European which Giorgia Meloni and her party clearly didn’t.
The third way of political positioning is the superiority of the identity chosen which determines which identity or issues give a greater good to the people. On her campaign and after winning the election, Giorgia Meloni is prioritizing fixing the economy by cutting spending, energy security, and halting immigration. These priority issues are brought up by Giorgia Meloni and her party because that priority is in line with what Italians prioritize per Summer 2022 according to Eurobarometer 97 (Mattia, 2022).
The fourth way is to communicate the identity in order to infiltrate the voters’ minds of our positioning. The identity is best communicated in a simple way for people to understand and be able to distinguish between a candidate and another candidate. In communicating her views and political ideas, Giorgia Meloni uses her speech to deliver them. In one of her speeches delivered in Spain on June 2021, she stated and quoted from BBC:
“Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology… no to Islamist violence, yes to secure borders, no to mass migration… no to big international finance… no to the bureaucrats of Brussels!” (Kirby, 2022). In that speech, Giorgia Meloni wants to communicate to the people the views she had on LGBT, immigration, and anti-EU stance.
The fifth way is preemptive action which means the positioning cannot be copied by other candidates. As we know, Giorgia Meloni and Fratelli d’Italia party positions themselves on far-right politics which can’t be copied by their rival, the Partitio Democratico which holds the center-left politics. Those two parties also don’t have the same values such as the FI favor to anti-EU meanwhile the PD favor to EU.
The sixth and last positioning aspect is the output which is to get a good amount of voters. Giorgia Meloni with Fratelli d’Italia won the general election in September 2022. The winning showed the importance of a good political positioning that can bring the primary goal which is to win the election. The Fratelli d’Italia party won the election by the share of the vote from their coalition by 26% and was able to conquer the majority of the chamber and senate. This remarkable winning of the far-right party led by Giorgia Meloni was because the people of Italy right now are prioritizing the need of fixing their life post-pandemic rather than the importance of the ideology offered by the center-left party. That concludes that the good political positioning of Giorgia Meloni with the Fratelli d’Italia party and their slogans, campaigns, and speeches are effective to compete in the election and won it.
REFERENCES
Kasali, Rhenald, 1998, “Membidik Pasar Indonesia: Segmenting, Targeting, Positioning ”, Gramedia Pustaka Utama: Jakarta.
Riegert, B. (2022, September 26). Who is Giorgia Meloni, the star of the Italian far right? dw.com. https://www.dw.com/en/italy-election-who-is-giorgia-meloni-the-star-of-the-far-right/a-62604896#:~:text=Meloni%20headed%20into%20the%20election,abortions%20and%20same%2Dsex%20marriage.
Kirby, B. P. (2022, October 21). Who is Giorgia Meloni? The rise to power of Italy’s new far-right PM. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63351655
Clarke, S., & Voce, A. (2022, September 27). Italian election 2022: live official results. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2022/sep/25/italian-election-2022-live-official-results
Euronews. (2022, September 23). Enrico Letta: Giorgia Meloni’s main rival in Italy’s snap election. Euronews. https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/23/enrico-letta-giorgia-melonis-main-rival-in-italys-snap-election
Mattia, T.S.(2022, November 24.).Why Were Italians Swayed to the Right by the Brothers of Italy? Green European Journal. https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/why-were-italians-swayed-to-the-right-by-the-brothers-of-italy/
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