What is this "bad girl of civil disobedience" doing in a right wing majority government? The newly elected Commissioner to the European Union explains the reasons for her "radical" change.

by Paola Zanuttini

SUMMARY: This is a lively and successful interview, revealing private and human aspects of Emma Bonino as well, starting from her description of her home environment, which, at the moment, she is sharing with her brother and his family, including some young children. Bonino gives her reasons why she does not at all regret her current political alignment nor does she feel it to be in contradiction with her prior political beliefs and actions. She admits there are identity problems, which though she feels would have surfaced even if she were in the progressive front. Actually, it is neither the dangers of Fini style neo-fascism, nor Bossi's machismo that frighten her as much as the problems Berlusconi is facing in implementing the reform program he had promised. She then makes an assessment of Tiziana Maiolo, Pannella, and others. When asked about her personal life, she mentions a relationship which recently broke up leaving a certain amount of bitterness. At the end of the interview, she mentions what s

hould be her priorities as Commissioner for the European Union .

(IL VENERDI' DI REPUBBLICA, November 11, 1994).

Rome. We run into Signora Amalia on the stairs. She is both her maid and boss. She is walking on crutches and bringing a couple of shirts she has just ironed. Glued to a very small tv screen are her two teen-age nephews who just arrived from Bra, and are trying to watch the day's instalment of "The young and the restless". Her sister-in-law is on the terrace preparing a sandwich for her husband. Emma Bonino, instead, is in the bathroom giving us audience as she brushes her teeth, and then jumps around trying to put on some panty-hose.

So if nothing has changed since the radical Seventies, years in which she was living in the Trastevere neighborhood (a lower class section of the city) in a tiny apartment with Antan's joyful and crowded mess, what is this informal, 46 year old "bad girl" doing inside a majority alliance that always has a corporate look to it?

How could it happen that Emma Bonino, someone who has been historically radical, a practitioner of civil disobedience, a real believer in anti-prohibitionism and troublemaker par excellence, received her first institutional post, that of EEC Commissioner for consumers rights and humanitarian aid, under Berlusconi's first government?

"It is possible, it is possible and let me explain why. Because the progressives did not want us. With the new electoral law, we could not run on our own ticket, we needed to show a connection to a national movement. Forza Italia offered us seven constituencies without asking us anything in exchange and we, the reformers, accepted gratefully".

I wasn't talking about the technical justifications, but rather about the human ones. Don't you have identity problems when you are among these new political allies? There are post-fascists, anti-choice people, law and order types among them...

"In that case, I'd also have some problems with an alliance with the opposite front. Maybe I'm closer to a liberal-socialist kind of orientation, but not to the type of management the Italian Socialist Party had. Perhaps I could share the daily practice of the Italian Communist Party , but not their ideological hat due to which you either were a communist or you were a second class leftist. And then, everyone has her priorities".

And what were these priorities that made you side with the rightists?

"The electoral reform based on the Anglo-Saxon model, which is the only way to get rid of rule by parties. When you have a two-times vote, everybody can run and then you make alliance only for the final vote. This is the way you keep the party rule system unchanged, whereas the one-time vote forces the destruction of the existing bureaucracies, which are the actual problem in this country."

Excuse me for saying this, but for years you have been targeting the rule by parties and then your nomination as EEC Commissioner was the result of a very sophisticated ballet by different parties. Everybody was insisting on their candidate, Napolitano was called to the stage, Ferrara danced his little minuet, Speroni was trampling, Pannella was rearing like a horse, Berlusconi was stumbling around . It looked like everyone got their retribution.

"Did I say that political parties were over? We are not even half way through the transition and there are already quite a few people who want to stop. Beccaria thought something that was very wise about scapegoats, and that is that scapegoats are doubly unjust because they make all others innocent. Now that Craxi and Andreotti have fallen, it seems that Mattarella was never involved in party rule. In a little while we'll even forget Tangentopoli."

You made a self-denunciation and were arrested for abortion when it was a criminal offense. You are a leader of the women movement, you are a member of a party that was the first to have a homosexual front. Are you at ease in a majority where some people like Bossi are fixated on a supermacho doctrine; where the neo-fascist call someone gay if they want to insult him; where Pivetti and company want to put the legality of abortion back for a debate?

"Aside from the day to day, ordinary vulgarities, some great changes are taking place in this majority. Fini is transforming the Movimento Sociale in a conservative party void of any post-fascist identity. Maybe he too will have to face a split in the party, but he is moving in that direction, and in our political scene it cannot be but a good thing to have a rightist front. And I feel free not to share anything with it. As far as Bossi's super macho tendency, he has problems, too bad for him, I hope he is able to get over them. Certainly there are some Parliament members from Alleanza Nazionale who are intolerant of gays, but I must also say the that coalition voted unanimously for the elimination of capital punishment from the military code and for the proposal for a moratorium on capital punishment, which was presented by our government to the general assembly of the United Nation."

What about abortion? Is it not discouraging to have to fight again for a right that was won twenty years ago?

"I don't really think that anyone in this Parliament wants to seriously bring abortion up for debate. Pivetti is surely doing her job, and so is Casini who once in a while drops a hint to make his electorate happy. But nobody is going to touch abortion. That there is a rightist government is not a determining factor, to the contrary. In America they elected a Democratic president and yet the anti-abortion movement is galopping along, while in the ultra-conservative English government, nobody even dreams to make moves against abortion".

Won't you tell us something about Berlusconi?

"I must say that while I never feared any danger of a shift toward Fascism, I really am afraid that Berlusconi will loose along the way those liberal reform components he had promised. He is not strong enough. Instead of waiting time on marginal projects he should propose structural reforms. I am afraid that he too will discover that alliance politics are convenient for him as well. I wouldn't want him all of a sudden to feel like he doesn't even want to put up a fight with the municipalities whose economies are based on spas."

So, why did you give him a vote of confidence?

"Really I still continue to do so, because both he and all other entrepreneurs really have no choice. Either they adapt to the rules of a market economy or this country will not survive".

And how do you get along with your female colleagues in the majority alliance?

"I have never thought along the lines of "we women". In any front I have always found women that I liked and others I couldn't stand. Right now I get along, really get along well, with Tiziana Parenti and Tiziana Maiolo."

And are you siding with Maiolo or Di Pietro?

"I am siding with Di Pietro, who, in my opinion, keeps on doing an excellent job, but not with Borrelli and his political management of the investigation."

Don't you think that Tiziana Maiolo's somersaults from Rifondazione Comunista to Forza Italia are signs of being power hungry?

"Well, she has this obsession with justice, with the rule of law, with the fight for civil rights. It is difficult for her to talk about anything else. Maybe it is a mania she has for being seen. If we start talking about the power of appearances and TV rule, I think she is in good company."

Since we already broached the subject, what about Pannella's somersaults? Did he do them so he could stay afloat?

"He doesn't have that kind of a problem. Certainly he has the problem of wanting to count in politics, but I have that problem too. It's not like I am in politics just to be a missionary."

In your working relation who is the victim and who is the executioner?

"Marco claims he is the victim, but I don't really think so. In any case, we've lasted so long because we had very separate private lives."

And how is your private life?

""Mine? Well I really like sailing and scuba diving. With the oxygen mask, cause you know with all these cigarettes..."

What about your love life?

"Nothing is going on. A thirteen year old relationship is over - it ended badly. My partner did not rise to the height of his contradiction. Things do end, but one should have the courage, the friendship and the fondness to sit you down and explain things to you. And by doing that spare you the disappointment of finding out how things really are."

What are you like when you are going through love troubles?

"I'm not in pain because of love, it was a slap to my vanity . What do you mean, me? Why did it have to happen to me? This is what makes me suffer. I didn't miss him in a day to day sense , as I too found that intolerable, but what I am missing is a sense of the future, because even though we were far away from each other, living in separate homes, I thought we would grow old together.

What will be your first goal in Brussels?

Set up this program for humanitarian aid and emergencies well. We have a budget of 1,000 billion (ItalianLira). With that amount you can do some good things, and operations that are put together well allow you to find private financing as well. Burundi is our first goal, meaning, avoiding what happened in Rwanda, where by now there is nothing you can do except supplying basic assistance. Instead in Burundi, where both Utu and Tutsi refugees are about to cross the border, you have to prevent spill over, the expansion of the conflict.

Is there something about yourself you don't like? Something that bothers you?

"My lying. Yes, I tell lies."

Did you tell any this time?

"No! No they are just light lies. Maybe I don't feel like telling people that I am taking off with someone, so I say that I am going to Madrid for a meeting. Or maybe I pass something off as real some when instead it is just a dream I would love to see come true."