The Più Europa feud is also spilling over into Radicali Italiani. Secretary Blengino resigns: “Hallisey treats the party as if it were his own”

“I have decided to resign from my post as national secretary of Radicali Italiani. It is a deeply painful decision, taken in the face of political decay and serious irregularities that are preventing a proper party conference from being held.” Filippo Blengino, secretary of Radicali Italiani, explains his decision in a statement to the press agencies and in a number of videos subsequently posted on social media.

The secretary has highlighted serious problems ahead of the forthcoming congress of one of the successor parties to Marco Pannella’s Radical Party: “The serious lack of transparency in the management of membership registrations and the irregularities surrounding the 24th Congress prevent me from taking responsibility for convening a meeting whose legitimacy I cannot vouch for,” continues Blengino, before launching a scathing attack on the person he holds responsible for this serious lack of transparency, the party leader (who is also leader of Più Europa) Matteo Hallissey: “The issue,” Blengino adds, “runs much deeper: there is nothing radical left in Radicali Italiani. A movement founded to combat party politics has become one of its most grotesque bodies. Transparency is obstructed, democratic rules are regarded as a hindrance, and those who dissent are treated as enemies. Under Matteo Hallissey’s leadership, a proprietary view of the party has taken hold; it is now held hostage by a political sect in which personal loyalty takes precedence over competence, and the statutory bodies have been reduced to mere instruments for ratifying decisions taken elsewhere.” Blengino also goes into detail not only on opaque membership procedures but also on certain initiatives that have created “problems in the management of resources” and regarding which there has been “a lack of transparency”, such as the ‘Stop Tassa Etica’ campaign.

But the real issue behind Blengino’s attack – who has always been very close to the long-standing secretary of Radicali Italiani, now secretary and MP for Più Europa, Riccardo Magi – is what he describes as Hallissey’s attempt to “turn Radicali Italiani into a tool for internal strife within Più Europa, in the service of personal ambitions that have nothing to do with our causes”. In practice, the very explicit accusation levelled at Hallissey is that he is also using Radicali Italiani as a tool against Magi. It is well known, in fact, that the president of Più Europa, in agreement with the former secretary and MP Benedetto Della Vedova, would like to lead the party into the forthcoming general election as part of Matteo Renzi’s ‘Casa Riformista’ – a political strategy which does not sit well with Magi, who would prefer to deal with Renzi ‘as equals’, without handing over Più Europa’s votes to the leader of IV ‘on a turnkey basis’ – and for this reason, in recent weeks they have succeeded in getting the Più Europa assembly to approve a motion to convene a new congress in December, just a few months before the election, which is expected to determine the party’s political line and elect a new secretary. An appeal has been lodged in court by supporters of the current secretary against the convening of the congress – which Magi considers to be in breach of the party’s constitution – and this case is still pending. Meanwhile, at the end of last week, Hallissey and Della Vedova were outvoted at the general assembly, where they had tabled a new motion calling for the convening of an ‘extraordinary general assembly’ to discuss how to proceed with the party’s congress process.