Giorgia Meloni has relocated her entire government to a fortified plateau above the treeline in the Alps and now governs Italy through a single megaphone mounted on a tripod, a move her office describes as «the most direct form of executive communication available in the republican era.»
The cabinet meets outdoors in parkas at dawn, and ministers wishing to speak must climb a wooden ladder to the megaphone platform and shout their portfolios down the valley. The first decree issued this way, read out at a volume residents of Turin later compared to a passing freight train, ordered all government business conducted at altitudes above the snow line.
Roberto Vannacci, whose new movement has been outflanking the prime minister from the right, responded by announcing his own headquarters on a lower but steeper hill, from which he intends to shout back. Supporters of both camps have begun gathering at the foot of the two slopes each morning, holding up hand-lettered signs and waiting to hear which megaphone wins the day.
The prime minister's approval rating, already the envy of Western Europe, has climbed further since the relocation, according to aides who now measure it by counting the number of villages that report hearing the morning broadcast. Donald Trump is said to have called to ask whether the megaphone could be heard from his golf course and was told it could not, which he described as «a tremendous shame, the best shame.»
By next week the cabinet intends to extend the arrangement, installing a second megaphone on the opposite ridge so that the government can address itself in stereo and no longer needs to walk between ministries.