Subject: Enrolments to the 1994 radical party
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X-Comment: The Transnational Radical Party List
Join the radical party!
by Emma Bonino
ABSTRACT: Letter whereby the Radical Party Secretary General, after
providing essential information on the ongoing political campaigns and on
the initiatives it has not been possible to launch, invites members to join
the radical party for 1994.
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Baltimore, November 17th, 1993
Dear friends,
in February this year, when the "Italian miracle" ensured the survival of
the transnational and transparty radical party of 1993, we knew the
question of the party's existence would emerge anew in early 1994. The
funds raised thanks to the generosity and confidence of the 37,000 Italian
members (over $8 million) allowed us to cancel pre-existing debts and
finance the activities of the last ten months. But the remaining funds will
be finished at the end of January. We knew a one-time contribution of that
amount of money was insufficient to guarantee the life of the party, and we
said that only 30,000 members, paying the "Western" membership fee every
year, could ensure the survival, the ideas and the hopes of the radical
party.
The 37,000 Italians who joined for 1993 have allowed what we call our
"social reason" to survive: meeting and mutually supporting each other in a
party which, through nonviolence, can create supranational individual law
and obtain effective supranational institutional achievements capable of
guaranteeing it.
Last 2 November in New York we presented the United Nations Secretary
General Boutros Ghali with 75,000 signatures gathered throughout the world
for the petitions for the immediate establishment of the International
Tribunal to prosecute the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.
The inauguration today in The Hague of the International Tribunal is on the
one hand a step in the direction of an international jurisdiction - i.e.
the creation of a permanent tribunal for the prosecution of the crimes
against humanity committed in every part of the world - and on the other
hand a first result of our initiative. There is no turning back: the war
criminals will have to be prosecuted and punished. Nonetheless, on thanking
me and through me all signatories, Mr Boutros Ghali quite rightly
underlined that the initiative could fail without the support of
parliamentary groups, cultural personalities and non-governmental organs.
Therefore, efforts need to be made so that that the Tribunal be given the
technical and financial means to function and so that the rapists, the
torturers and above all the "war lords" be prosecuted by the judging court.
I am writing these lines from Baltimore, where I shall be attending the
"Transcontinental Conference on the harm Reduction Policy" organized by the
"Drug Policy Foundation" and by the "European Cities on Drug Policy".
This afternoon, in front of the representatives and mayors that signed the
Frankfurt resolution, I will illustrate the key points of our initiative on
drugs, i.e. challenging the juridical and institutional instruments
underlying the prohibitionist strategy. These are: the Vienna Convention of
1961/1972, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988
Convention on drug traffic. Moreover, saying that individual freedom is in
jeopardy when a state wants to interfere with the personal lives of its
citizens by penally prosecuting behaviours - such as drug-taking - which do
not, per se, damage other citizens. Also, I will say that the radical party
will continue supporting personalities such as Justavo Degrieff, procurator
general of Columbia, or Jaime Paz Zamora, president of Bolivia, who believe
that the war on drugs is a lost war, and that "legalization is the only
possible solution today".
When you will receive this letter, the founding congress of the
"International League for the abolition of the death penalty by 2000" will
have taken place in Brussels. The aim of this League is promoting and
organizing a step-by-step abolitionist campaign to be carried out in the
coming seven years. It will identify the intermediate political and
juridical objectives with the purpose of scrapping the death penalty from
the penal regulations and the constitutions of all countries of the world.
In these months we have instead been unable to launch three other
objectives decided by the resolution of the General Council of Sofia last
July: an environmental initiative (the creation of a Pan-European community
of major rivers and waterways; the right to information; the initiative to
close down dangerous nuclear power plants and enhance energy efficiency,
especially in the central-eastern part of Europe); the commitment in the
parliaments and international organizations to support the circulation and
progressive (formal) adoption of an International Language; the creation of
a parliamentary newsletter and the setting up of the relative facilities at
the various parliaments.
This not by lack of will, but by lack of money and resources.
Once again, we will endeavour to obtain the money we need from Italy, which
is in the middle of a dire crisis which, if unchecked, could have dangerous
effects. The party system and the use of public money for private purposes
on the one hand, and the disrespect of the rules and of the law on the
other, have brought about an explosive situation, where it is hard to
foresee any democratic operativeness in the short and medium term.
Early in November we opened the membership campaign for the radical party
of 1994 in Italy, by sending twenty issues of a daily newspaper to the
37,000 members for 1993. It was a considerable financial effort ($120,000)
which, along with other means which we will need to devise during the
campaign, we hope can help reconfirm the number of Italian members of 1993
also for 1994.
The appeal I am addressing, dear friends, is to guarantee your enrolment
for 1994 as soon as possible. In 1993, some 5,000 non-Italian citizens,
living in over 60 countries, have joined the party. They include 17 members
of government, 19 members of the European parliament, 531 national MPs, 35
members of assemblies of non-recognized assemblies and representatives of
over 80 national political formations. The quality of the commitment of
each of them has allowed our ideas to live and circulate from Moscow to
Ouagadougou, from Kiev to Tirana, from Bucharest to Zagreb, from Tbilisi to
Sofia, in extremely difficult and often desperate situations.
I'm thinking in particular about our comrade and friend Mohamed
Kresevljacovic, the mayor of Sarajevo, which is still under siege among the
indifference of the rich and wealthy West. That same West is giving life,
in this end of century, to evils we believed to be forever buried:
extermination, war and fanaticism. With the exception of the 37,000
Italians, the West seems to ignore the Gandhian non-violent hope of the
Transnational and Transparty Party, of the party of the right to life and
of the life of rights.
Only by joining the radical party for 1994 can this hope be fulfilled.
I look forward to reading your names on the enrolment coupons and on the
letters where you will confirm your decision to be part of the radical
party wherever you may live.
It is a hope addressed to you and to myself.
Sincerely,
Emma Bonino
