Wear a face mask and respect science. That’s the message from an unusual source — Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s League and hitherto a mask skeptic.
“The mask must be used when needed … obviously in indoor venues, on the train, when I catch a train with my daughter I wear a mask … I hope we can go back to normality as soon as possible,” Salvini said in a TV interview Monday. And for young people, who are increasingly becoming infected by the virus, his message was: “Use your brain, keep distances and respect what science asks us to do.”
That’s quite a U-turn for Salvini, whose League is the country’s biggest political force and polls at around 25 percent (although that’s down from last year’s European elections, when it picked up 34 percent of the vote).
Just last week, Salvini took part in a meeting in the Senate that gave voice to politicians who deny the virus is still a threat. Italian media reported that Salvini arrived for the meeting without a mask and when a Senate clerk asked him to respect the rules and put one on, he replied: “I don’t have a mask and I don’t wear it.” In a video posted on YouTube, a member of Salvini’s staff gives him a mask but he doesn’t put it on. The president of the Senate, Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati, has announced a preliminary hearing into Salvini’s behavior.
The health ministry has recently extended until August 15 a rule that makes it mandatory to wear a mask in indoor venues, including on public transport.
Salvini’s U-turn highlights the difficulties politicians — especially populist ones — have in finding the right approach during the pandemic. U.S. President Donald Trump had long refused to wear a mask but recently tweeted an image in which he was wearing one and calling the act (and himself) “patriotic.”
It also highlights Salvini’s struggles to take a coherent line. The left-leaning La Repubblica daily made a video of Salvini’s speeches in which he made several U-turns. For example, in February, when the virus started to hit Italy, he called for the country to be shut down and for strict controls on all those arriving and leaving. A few days later, he called for the opposite, saying Italy should “go back to normality.”
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