Where do the radical “poor creatures” go after Emma Bonino’s death?

Rome. Within minutes, an announcement – “she has left us, but she will never leave us”, says Riccardo Magi, secretary of Più Europa. And so Emma Bonino’s death moves beyond the personal sphere (which the Radical leader did not see as so inseparable from the ‘political’, unlike Marco Pannella), to become a public embrace. But this loss also marks a point of no return for the explosion-implosion – and perhaps the underground resurrection – of the former Radical galaxy with its many combative, beleaguered members: a former galaxy split into six or seven rivulets, and subject to centrifugal and centripetal forces, but, says Rita Bernardini, now president of the Nessuno Tocchi Caino association, capable of re-emerging from the darkness ‘thanks to its method’ and in the ‘karstic river of its ideas’ (the former MP cites one of Pannella’s recurring examples: “Ideas that sometimes seem to vanish underground only to resurface, having settled deep within”). What, meanwhile, does Emma’s death leave behind, apart from the stardust of the former Radical galaxy? To the human eye, there appear today to be three distinct trajectories, only partially overlapping with one another, ten years on from what was the irreparable Big Bang: Pannella’s death in 2016, the subsequent party conference and the so-called split—legally and financially complex—between the guardians of orthodoxy, upholding a constitution that does not provide for direct participation in electoral contests (with Maurizio Turco as the last man standing in the castle, the historic Torre Argentina headquarters, regarded both as a building and as a symbol), and the supporters of a more direct form of political activism, led by Marco Cappato and, initially, by Bonino herself. While Turco (Secretary of the Radical Party and President of the Marco Pannella Foundation, and thus editor of Radio Radicale, a broadcaster also supported by public funds and recent sponsorship from Enel, Poste, FS and Intesa), on the outer orbit, acting as free agents on issues of rights and end-of-life care, are the Coscioni Association – comprising Cappato and Filomena Gallo, a close friend of Bonino’s who has stood by her in many battles, as well as Marco Perduca and Rocco Berardo – and Cappato’s pan-European political movement, Eumans. Then there is the institutional sphere of Più Europa, founded following Bonino’s time in government, positioned within the centre-left, but with Magi on the civic side and Benedetto Della Vedova on the more Renzi-aligned side (Bonino urged just a few days ago: ‘This is not the time to be divided’).

Yet ‘orbits’ are also perceptions, depending on how one views the actual distance from what was once the original Pannella–Bonino core. What remains of that marvellous and at times dangerous melting pot? We mourn Emma, having already mourned Marco, and we ask ourselves questions. In the former galaxy, says Turco, always quoting Pannella, “there is no such thing as a political legacy”. Faced with these ten years that have turned the small, vibrant world of Torre Argentina upside down, we look ahead without certainties but with “tenacity”, says Della Vedova, quoting Bonino. Perduca, a former Radical Party senator elected under the PD banner and Emma’s former ‘classmate’, remembers Bonino as a ‘well-rounded politician who never put herself forward as the subject of debate and never held back—and I say this regardless of whether we saw eye to eye or not’. Whether Emma’s death will hasten the former political constellation’s descent into a black hole or, conversely, give impetus to the underlying karstic force is a matter for the soothsayers. One indication of what Emma’s legacy might be can be gleaned from the words of Cappato (who recalls the “countless defeats that could be overcome and the few but unforgettable successes, such as the creation of the International Criminal Court: Bonino’s memory lives on in all those who wish to draw inspiration from her, regardless of their political affiliation”). Beyond these three spheres lies the former secretary of Radicali Italiani, Mario Staderini, who continues the fight to defend democracy, in particular through appeals to international courts – such as the campaign that led to the introduction of digital signatures for referendums and citizens’ initiatives, and the one that took Italy before the European Court of Human Rights over changes to electoral rules in the run-up to the vote. Yet the term ‘heir’ does not even apply to Bonino within the former movement. “Be as disorganised as possible,” Pannella used to say,” recalls Bernardini, reflecting, with a mixture of sorrow and hope, on the mysterious and redemptive power of karstic ideas.