Sofia, July 15-18, 1993

1. Return to statutory normality

2. "Transition towards the new"

3. Transformation of the radical party into a transnational

political organization.

4. Reasons for the transnational choice.

5. The sixties and seventies.

6. The eighties.

7. A tendency towards "institutionalization" of the party.

8. The campaign against death by hunger in the world.

9. The attempts to keep the party "outside" the regime.

10. The resolution of the Florence Congress in 1985.

11. The "choose or disband" campaign.

12. The Bologna decision.

13. From Bologna 1988 to Budapest 1989.

14. The end of a segment of theory of praxis. Non-participation in

the elections.

15. The phase following the Budapest Congress.

16. The assumption of full congressional powers.

17. Economic and financial redress.

18. The "New Party" project.

19. The distancing from Italian events.

20. The initiative concerning former Yugoslavia.

21. The campaign for abolition of the death penalty by

the Year 2000.

22. The first session of the XXXVI Congress.

23. From the first to the second session.

24. The second session.

25. The reasons for "this" address.

Dearest friends,

the meeting of the Assembly of parliamentarians and of the General Council of the party, which opens today in Sofia, has been called in accordance with the motion approved by the second session of the XXXVI Congress, held in Rome early last February. The 30 days delay with respect to the maximum term agreed upon are due to unforeseeable, added-on undertakings by the Italian Parliament (the passing of the new electoral law, which would have prevented the presence of deputies of those assemblies) and consequent technical and organizational difficulties.

1. RETURN TO "STATUTORY NORMALITY"

With this meeting we will not only proceed with the constitution of these two party organs, but also with the election of the party president and the formal and complete assumption of the responsibilities and powers which the statute attributes to the first secretary, Emma Bonino, and to the treasurer, Paolo Vigevano, both already elected by the Congress.

The transnational and transparty radical party has, by virtue of the extraordinary, "impossible" result of the 1993 membership campaign in Italy, reached and amply surpassed the minimum conditions set by the motion to verify and guarantee the technical and political conditions of existence of the party. In a very few weeks from the Congress conclusion, between the end of February and within the set terms, almost 36.000 Italian citizens joined the party for 1993. Today they are close to 38.000.

We - the party - have thus gained the right-duty to continue our activity, to affirm our intention and ability to carry out political initiatives and struggles, without any further reservations. The party, with this meeting, is self-assuredly back on its path, starting with the reconstitution of conditions for full "statutory normality".

2. "TRANSITION TOWARDS THE NEW"

This meeting therefore marks the end of a period of the party's life, which lasted without interruption for five and a half years, from January 1988, when I was elected first secretary of the party by the XXXIV Congress in Bologna.

This permanence, in this tenure, is exceptional in our history. Indeed, in little more than 26 years - from when, in May 1967, the radical party, relaunched and rebuilt by Marco Pannella and the "young" of the radical left, approved the new statute (the one which in fact remained in force until our latest Congress) - there have been 12 party secretaries elected by ordinary congresses, succeeding each other by strict application of a yearly mandate.

The mean permanence for each has thus been slightly more than two years, and no one's mandate was renewed more than three times.

This long tenure in the party secretaryship was due to a particular, anomalous moment in the life of the party, marked also by the interruption - for the first time in our history - of the punctual yearly calling of a Congress. Three years elapsed between April 1989 - date of the XXXV Congress in Budapest - and April 1992 - date of the first session of the XXXVI Congress in Rome.

A long interval. A breach of one of the party's essential characteristics, it would appear. This breach was not brought about by a failure to respect the rules by the executive organs, but by the recognition in Budapest, by the Congress, of an exceptional moment, of extraordinary difficulty for the life and the very existence of the party. The binding motion approved in that forum attributed explicitely to the first secretary, to the treasurer and to the presidents of the party and of the federal council, the option of jointly exercising full congressional powers. Once these powers were assumed, the decision of whether and when to reconvene Congress was placed in their hands - and their hands only.

Thus, the failure to apply the rule of yearly convocation of a Congress is traceable to this decision, and to the exceptional and extraordinary character of the situation.

This period, which we could call the "long path of transition towards the new", is at a close today.

It seems right and appropriate, intervening as I am for the last time as party secretary, to share not a whole account but at least some thoughts on what this transition phase has meant for the party, and ultimately for each one of us. It is not a useless exercise to assess the complexity, the dramatic nature (if I may) of the period we have gone through, and the weight borne by those who have lived it actively and responsibly. It can help us understand what we are as a party, our possibilities and our limits.

3. TRANSFORMATION OF THE RADICAL PARTY INTO A TRANSNATIONAL POLITICAL

ORGANIZATION

Let us remember that the "transition towards the new", the novelty of the party as it is today, is not to be sought for in the principles or values, which remain unchanged, nor in the theoretical extension of political perspective. This had within itself, potentially, as of the first reconstitution in 1967, all of the characteristics of the radical political proposition which were later fully expressed, including the transnational and transparty ones.

The appointment of Jean Fabre, French citizen, to the post of secretary in 1978, the "raids" by radical militants in Eastern Europe (including one by Pannella and other friends who were arrested here in Sofia, in August 1968, while handing out leaflets condemning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia), the "double membership card" principle - now become "the other, the first card" - backed by the party since the earliest years and reaffirmed on many occasions; all these are but examples.

The novelty lies in the decision we took at one point to transform a party which "also" had a transnational and transparty vocation into an exclusively transnational party, aimed at lending concreteness to the transnational dimension of political action.

4.REASONS FOR THE TRANSNATIONAL CHOICE

This decision was obviously not born in a vacuum, but traces its roots in decades of the radical party's "Italian" history; history with which, also for this reason, the party continues to maintain strong links. It is thus appropriate to speak of this "Italian history", even and all the more so with the many among us who have had little or nothing to do with it.

I believe it is best to distinguish two long phases in this account, starting with the first refounding of the radical party in the sixties.

5. THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES

The first phase lasts through the end of the seventies. Confronted by the very real regime situation which the immense power of the Christian Democrats had brought about, the objective which the radicals gave themselves - coherently with their democratic and nonviolent intransigence - was that of a deep-seated renewal of leftist forces which would permit them to unite and thus propose and bring about a democratic alternative to Christian Democratic power in Italy.

During most of this period, the radical party - structurally different from all other Italian political forces in terms of inspiration and political methods - operates along this direction from outside the institutions (we are present at elections in 1976 for the first time, gaining a small platoon of deputies). Grand battles are fought and won - divorce, abortion, conscientious objection - which split and change the presence of other political forces, renew the life of the country and place civil rights themes at the center of a possible alternative. It is during this period that the institution of the referendum (which in Italy can only abrogate laws) becomes an essential instrument of the party's political initiative.

6. THE EIGHTIES

The second phase begins at the end of the seventies and lasts through most of the eighties. With the proposal of a "historic compromise" addressed by the communists to the Christian democrats, and with so-called national unity - a government alliance including all major parties, the Christian Democrat, Communist and Socialist parties - the Italian political system ossifies into a regime which we were the first to call "partycratic", in which all those parties solidarily participate, and which causes an ever increasing degeneration of the democratic institutions.

The consolidation of this regime - which we have also labeled "real democracy", paraphrasing "real socialism" - determines on the one hand, given the lack of interlocutors, the impracticability of the objective of an alternative through a renewed left, objective which had primarily directed radical initiative. On the other hand, it determines a closing of many of the opportunities for the party's action within the country, with and for the people.

The radicals, as I have already recalled, entered Parliament in 1976. During the course of their first term, the 4 elected deputies had acted fully autonomously with respect to the party - as foreseen by the statute - but in happy synergy with the possibility of effective external action which the party could still rely upon.

The turning point comes in 1979. The considerable success obtained in the year's elections and the greater number of elected deputies imply that most of the party's top cadres enter Parliament. This makes it more difficult to maintain party leadership roles separate from institutional roles, as during the previous legislature. On the other hand, the new political situation calls for the radicals to wage a battle of resistance and counterposition against the entire, compact "partycratic" regime bloc, without having - during this phase - the possibility of indicating and preconstituting an alternative coalition. This action, by its very momentum, brings ever more to the forefront the role of the parliamentary group, which inevitably becomes the centre, the happening place of radical political initiative.

7. A TENDENCY TOWARDS THE "INSTITUTIONALIZATION" OF THE PARTY

The necessary consequence of this state of affairs - notwithstanding everyone's integrity and goodwill - is a tendency towards the "institutionalization" of the party and thus a transformation of its very nature and role.

This tendency is worrisome on various accounts. It is not so much or not only because of an opposition of principles between "grass roots" politics and political action in the institutions. The concreteness of the Italian situation of the time was indeed that of a "partycratic" degeneration of all institutions, including parliamentary ones. Parliament had become less and less a "real" Parliament, and more and more the place where deals among the various partycratic and corporative centres of powers are registered and legitimized, outside and counter to any rule of law. In a similar Parliament the radicals, of course, conduct a frontal opposition against this state of affairs. In the long run, however, operating mostly in that environment, playing at that table, entails risks of assimilation, of becoming "internal" to the regime being fought. This means the party is faced with the danger of a progressive loss of focus and subversion of its very identity.

Not out of a stubborn desire to remain identical to itself, but to continue - in the face of changing historical conditions - to lend life to the reasons and hopes for which it was founded, the radical party has had to make decisions, in the course of the eighties. Decisions to react, step by step, often in painful ways, to what seems like an already traced destiny. It experiments, and its choices are each time difficult ones, countercurrent, hard because they are "unnatural", because they go in a direction opposite to that which events indicate it should slide into.

8. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST DEATH BY STARVATION IN THE WORLD

These values are reflected in the decision, made at the beginning of the decade, to break with the "topicality" and logics of Italian politics and to define as the absolute political priority for the party - proposing it also to the Italian state and to Europe - the elimination of death by starvation of millions of people each year in the world's South. This effort, let us remember, has been particularly supported by Marco Pannella, with the most extreme instruments of nonviolent action.

9. THE ATTEMPTS TO KEEP THE PARTY "OUTSIDE" THE REGIME

This was also the sense, on a completely different level, in 1980, of not participating in district and regional elections and thus deliberately renouncing the election of thousands of Councillors in local assemblies. It would have been inconceivable for any other party.

Along the same lines, let us remember the 1983 electoral campaign, where the radicals - in a move unprecedented anywhere - although presenting their lists, invite electors to not vote to signal their refusal to sit at the cheats' table of the "partycratic" regime, and then establish a particular "code of behaviour", consistent with that choice, for radicals elected in that legislature.

The underlying theme was a confrontation of the radical party with itself - and often times for each one of us with himself - along the lines of a recurrent alternative: to accept a dignified, minority role as democratic "good conscience"; role which could be exercised, and advantageously so, in the context of the "partycratic" regime - or to go all the way with contesting the in fact undemocratic character of Italian "real democracy".

10. THE 1985 FLORENCE CONGRESS RESOLUTION

The final act of this confrontation was played out at the Florence Congress in 1985. The Congress declares that to continue, from an extreme minority position, to parrot the democratic play in a system where the institutions are not guided by fixed rules and rule of law, but rather by a sort of law of the jungle where only power ploys count, would only have meant freely providing the "partycratic" regime with a cover of democratic respectability. Without so wishing, it would have meant becoming an addendum of the regime, thus denying the reasons for which the radical party existed. Choosing out of necessity for truth and democratic rigour, the radical party decides to give itself one year to propose to the next Congress a project of termination of its activities.

11. THE "CHOOSE OR DISBAND" CAMPAIGN

The response to this challenge was truly extraordinary. Over ten thousand Italians, as of September 1986 - with the launching of the "Choose or disband" campaign - become members, bidding the radical party to continue to exist. The campaign's success is also due to the principle of freedom and nonjudgement of membership, and thus the scandal provoked by the enlistment of criminals serving life sentences (Piromalli, Andraus), authors of heinous crimes who choose to militate in a nonviolent party from their cells.

This strong signal of trust in the radical party could only induce us to carry on, but it was not such that by itself it could make us resolve the contradiction which we faced for so many years. It certainly did not give us the strength to defeat the "partycratic" regime, and I would add - as a strictly personal remark - that many membership requests, particularly those which came as "double cards" from militants and leaders of other parties, expressed not so much a request for a more clearcut separation and opposition to the party regime, but rather a desire to see the radical party continuing to ensure a democratic and clean presence amid the political system as it was. Even with the best intentions, thus, the radical party was being asked to continue to exist as the regime's saving grace.

It is at this point and in this context that the transnational choice matures. It derives from the awareness, grown particularly with the campaign against death by starvation in the world, that today's decisive choices can only be governed in a transnational dimension. But it is also the result of the party's "Italian" history: the response to the need to safeguard and keep alive its most profound and authentic inspiration. Taking the radical party away from Italian institutions and towards a new, fascinating and unprecendented way of conducting politics also meant radically defeating the dangers of "institutionalization". Not by dodging problems, but by taking a fundamental step forward to coherently develop the founding reasons of the radical experience.

I would like all of you who have not witnessed the "Italian" history of the party to understand what a hard and trying task this transformation meant for the party's militants and leaders. It should not be forgotten that they had gathered and had grown together politically by practicing a completely different form of political action, namely a national and institutional form, becoming experts at it, and scoring important successes and satisfactions, both political and personal.

12. THE BOLOGNA DECISION

In these conditions we arrive at the XXXIV Congress held in Bologna, in 1988, with the slogan "Across frontiers, parties, national States, for a Europe ruled by law and nonviolence".

During the Congress, Pannella forcefully stresses the need for resumption of nonviolence as a political means of battle for people, with people, outside institutions; he suggests to replace the "rose in a fist" with the effigy of Gandhi; but above all, he puts across as the absolute priority the transnational choice and turnabout, which carries with it the decision to no longer present radical lists at Italian and European elections.

What is the attitude of the leadership group? Let us take into account that we are dealing with a group composed of not a few high level personalities of proven ability, matured in long years of militancy and political fight and, as I've said before, consolidated through parliamentary activity and experience. Through lengthy experience and habit, these people are used to recognizing and never questioning in any way Marco Pannella's leadership. In this political moment, however, this group finds itself substantially united in claiming its autonomy in the conduction of the party, even with respect to Pannella.

Faced with the proposed turnabout, the reaction of the leadership group is, to my mind, understandably reticent. There is by no means a refusal; in fact, with very few exceptions, Pannella's propositions are accepted, but as precious factors which can enhance the party's image, rather than as the fruit of a deep-seated need for a substantial change in the party and in the relationship of the latter with the institutions and the political system. There is thus a partial and limited adhesion, implying less than full commitment in the new direction.

Clearly, this is a personal interpretation of those events. And it is my opinion that the institutional propensity, sustained by the belief that the party's identity within the system could be safeguarded by opposing the system, was in actual fact the prevailing attitude both in the leadership group and in the Congress as a whole.

The outcome of the Congress reflects this unclear condition. The conclusive motion, prepared not without difficulty by the leadership group, ratifies the transnational choice, but with means and timing on which Pannella raises explicit objections. It does not obtain a qualified majority, which is necessary to make it binding for the executive organs. The point which raises the most discussion is that the motion does not provide for any explicit consequence in case the prescribed objectives (4 billions of self-financing, 3 thousand memberships outside Italy) are not achieved. The adoption of this motion represents in any case an affirmation of the leadership group. But this affirmation soon reveals ephemeral, and only apparent expression of unity: fiery contrasts prevent the leadership group from expressing a candidate of its own for the post of party secretary.

My candidature arose from this context, representing among other things an effort to fill the void left by the failure to take responsibility by that leadership group, which, while asking Pannella for autonomy, proved incapable of exercising it.

Thus starts the long, slow, difficult and tortuous process of "transition towards the new" which I underscored above, perhaps oversimplifying.

13. FROM BOLOGNA 1988 TO BUDAPEST 1989

Following the conclusion of the XXXIV Congress, there are two moments which carry the party to the irreversible transnational choice of the Budapest Congress.

The first is during the meeting of the Federal Council in Brussels, in February 1988. At the proposal of Pannella, the first secretary is released from the commitment, undertaken amidst the ambiguities of the conclusions of the XXXIV Congress, to convene an extraordinary Congress if the congressional objective of 3.000 "non-Italian" memberships had not been reached within four months. This objective was in fact orchestrated, made unattainable in the hands of a leadership and of a party that was scarsely convinced and prepared. The inevitable failure and the subsequent summons of an extraordinary Congress could obviously have brought about the renouncing of the transnational choice and the confirmation of the "national" commitment with the continuation and consolidation of the party in the Italian institutions and system.

The second moment is expressed in the decision to follow up with a succession of bi-monthly meetings of the Federal Council. These meetings allow the party's executive organs to more directly and responsibly involve the whole leadership group in the careful and in-depth analysis of the actual situation of the party. On the other hand, these meetings encourage the executive organs to dedicate their energies to constantly seeking opportunities for encounters, above and beyond Italian boundaries. These, through political initiative and factual concreteness, repropose the timeliness of perspectives for the party's action in a transnational framework and for the realization of a new transparty dimension.

From Brussels to Madrid, from Grottaferrata to Jerusalem, from Bohiny to Strasburg, the party and its leadership are progressively, I would say inexorably, forced to come to terms with a serious and perhaps unsustainable situation: a sort of "apparatus", heavy and costly, had formed within the party. The existence of this apparatus affects party's entire way of being and - this is key - is made possible by the party's nestling within the Italian institutions. In this sense, "institutionalization" has become a factor of immediate and weighty political conditioning. On the other hand, and this is the other aspect which dramatically surfaces into awareness, bankruptcy looms close, despite public financing and the contribution made possible by the existence of parliamentary groups. At the Strasburg Federal Council in February 1989, two months before Budapest, the possibility that the party may have to fold is made known. We must henceforth take into account the hypothesis that the party must disappear for econo

mic and financial reasons, and that its heritage be entrusted to a "foundation".

The economic and financial grounds are the material data which make it obvious that a state of crisis has been reached. But it is the repeated opportunities for confrontation afforded by the Federal Council and other meetings of the leadership which make the basic contradiction emerge ever more. On the one hand, to ensure continuity, the party's presence inside the institutions appears ever more indispensable. On the other hand, it is precisely the break with this continuity that is indispensable so that the party may attempt to recover its identity by leaving the institutions and changing its structure. With renewed ability to affirm its principles and values, but also with its own operative autonomy, its own capacity for initiative and struggle.

14. THE END OF A SEGMENT OF THEORY OF PRAXIS. NON-PRESENTATION AT

THE ELECTIONS

In Jerusalem, but even more clearly in Bohini, the debate reveals yet many uncertainties, hesitations and deep-seated differences, but comes to a conclusion, marked by a statement by Pannella: the party would have to come to terms with the end of that "segment of theory of praxis" which had until then characterized its history, especially in Italy.

A consequence of this coming to terms is the way the first electoral test is handled following the decision to no longer run with radical party lists. The occasion is represented by the European elections of 1989. The path to be followed is completely new: militants and "founding fathers" of the radical party participate in the electoral contest in the context of various lists and political formations, lending substance to the by now transparty dimension of the radical party. The path taken is one of great difficulty; at the national level the routes inevitably multiply, challenging the ability of what once was the leadership group of the "Italian" party to remain so in a transnational dimension.

It is during this phase that the party is intensely involved, both internally and externally, in deeply pondering the timeliness and soundness of its theoretical reasons, and in verifying the validity of its own analyses and political evaluations. Thus, step by step, emerge the reasons that call for a clear-cut and deep break with the past, to resume political action in a different perspective, with a different structural and organizational set-up, and hence to proceed with the full recovery of the party's identity. Without this maturation, the extraordinary opportunity afforded by holding the XXXV Congress in Budapest - in that fantastic scenario, on the occasion of an exceptional event which will in any case remain one of the most remarkable and memorable of our history - would not have allowed to decide in all respects and for the first time with full awareness that the party become transnational and transparty.

As already pointed out in February 1991, in the address to the III Italian Congress of the party, Budapest leaves the preexisting party behind, and vigorously claims its values, history, objectives, fully convinced that they met and meet the requirements of our society in our times. But the party now breaks with its structures, its set-up, its operational and directional conditions, which have become inadequate in the face of new perspectives, requirements and commitments.

With Budapest, the formal prerequisites are configured and the political conditions are identified for ratification of the party's transnational and transparty character. But the enormous difficulties that concretely lie ahead in this direction are also shown in all their dramatic consistency by the Congress.

15. THE PHASE FOLLOWING THE BUDAPEST CONGRESS

At the conclusion of a highly tormented and complex phase, albeit one rich of initiative and activity, the party organs are now confronted with a new and different task, such as to initially raise doubts and uncertainties as to what actions should be taken.

Thus there is a first period during which the party questions itself on the path to take in order to conform its initiative to the congressional deliberations.

The most important opportunity for debate is afforded by the meeting of the Federal Council in Rome in September 1989. The dearth of memberships - particularly in Italy - the organizational inadequacy and, particularly, economic and financial conditions even worse than those denounced in Budapest, induce the Federal Council to urge the assumption of "full congressional powers" by the secretary, treasurer and presidents of the party and of the Federal Council, judging that the conditions outlined in the Budapest motion are amply met.

16. THE ASSUMPTION OF FULL CONGRESSIONAL POWERS

Full congressional powers are assumed at the end of 1989, just ahead of another meeting of the Federal Council in Rome, in January 1990. This meeting stresses the need to have tens of thousands of memberships as a necessary and indispensable "technical condition" to "safeguard the life of an extraordinary and anomalous reality, a life whose survival seems ever more probable, but which calls for intervention and assistance".

With the assumption of "full congressional powers", all party activities except those already started in central-eastern Europe are suspended; costs are "ruthlessly" contained (members who continue their activity do so without any compensation or reimbursement); initiatives geared to identifying new financial sources are undertaken.

17. ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL REDRESS

These measures and the financial initiatives undertaken - mainly through the possibilities opened by the presence of the radicals in the institutions, let us remember - allow the party to review its structural and organizational set-up, and to redress the ruinous preexisting economic and financial situation and to ensure, moreover, a sizeable availability of financial resources for the resumption of activities.

These results mature within the first quarter of 1991 and lead to the drafting of the "New Party" project.

It is a phase lasting almost two years, from the Budapest Congress to the III Italian Congress in February 1991. During this period the party and its executive organs concentrated the available energies on purely "internal" activity. The effort is essentially aimed at achieving the minimum conditions for the party's reconstitution. Once again, the choice is the most unpalatable one and hence difficult. It is humble, "invisible" work, implying a renounciation of apparently more gratifying "external" initiatives, which given the party's lack of operational ability, would in fact result in the illusion rather than the actuality of political action.

18. THE "NEW PARTY" PROJECT

At the beginning of 1991, the launching of the "New Party" project heralds a concrete prospect of "external" action. A newspaper written in Italian and translated into fifteen languages is sent to the ruling class and parliamentarians of over 100 countries, and to the network of militants operating from party sections in central and Eastern Europe. The aim is to involve as many parliamentarians and other political personalities in the activities and also in the structure of the radical party. The objective as well as the means is that of informing them and raising interest for the political proposal of the transnational, transparty party, to the point - if possible - of involving them actively and at the same time on both the general political project and on specific common initiatives, including parliamentary ones. To associate them with the party, to together create transnational, autonomous and federated organisms, which in turn will promote adhesions and militancy in each country.

19. THE DISTANCING FROM ITALIAN EVENTS

In the meantime the party - aware of the importance of the persistence of its link to the Italian situation - is ever more careful to signal that it is no longer an Italian political subject nor the instrument through which members can conduct politics in their country.

This is symbolized by the decision taken by deputies elected in the Italian Parliament (who had run on radical party lists in 1987) to constitute in the two Chambers parliamentary groups no longer called "radicals" but "European federalists", with all the ensuing difficulties of identification within the country.

20. THE INITIATIVE REGARDING FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

1991 is also the year of the radical party's initiative with respect to the situation of former Yugoslavia. In several Parliaments, radical party members present documents bidding the Governments to recognize the Republics which have declared their autonomy and independence on the basis of free popular consultations. The second session of the Federal Council is held in Zagreb in November, with the war raging on. At the end of the year, Marco Pannella and other radical militants visit the front in Osijek. On new year's eve, some of them wear Croatian uniforms, to show their active solidarity for a people who at the time was the object of violent aggression from an authoritarian nationalcommunist regime taking advantage of the passive complicity of European and international institutions.

21. THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY BY THE

YEAR 2000

This campaign got underway in August 1991. An appeal publicized in the third issue of the newspaper asked Gorbachev and the presidents of the Republics of the erstwhile USSR to refrain from applying the death penalty to the authors of the so-called "August coup".

The campaign was immediately endorsed by hundreds upon hundreds of parliamentarians and personalities in the fields of culture, the arts and science.

22. THE FIRST SESSION OF THE XXXVI CONGRESS

In the spring of 1992 the secretary, the treasurer and the presidents of the party and of the Federal Council decide to convene the XXXVI Congress. The membership situation is of over 7.500 non-Italians, of whom over 200 parliamentarians and government officials from 40 countries. Offsetting these positive data are those regarding Italian memberships: only 2.500, a quarter of the total.

The decision to hold a Congress determines the automatic withdrawal of "full powers" which were in fact "congressional powers". Full political responsibility relative to the life itself of the radical party is thus handed back and entrusted to the Congress members.

The Congress takes place in Rome in a scenario which reflects the new configuration of the party: hundreds of deputies from central and Eastern Europe are participating, proving the interest and support for the "New Party" proposal.

The situation with which the party faces Congress is however once again marked by economic and financial conditions of extreme scarcity with respect to requirements. So much so that it is difficult to see how the party can carry on its activities, unless something radically new takes place. In this perspective, the resources which could arise from the Italian situation, the "Italian reservoir", are once again deemed decisive for the existence of the party. In these conditions, it is obviously difficult to deliberate on the party's objectives and political commitments. Additionally, there is the need for new statutory rules, for the election of new organs.

Congressional debate shows the impossibility for the Congress to meet all these requirements within adequate timing.

A decision is thus reached to adjourn Congress to a second session, to be held within January 1993.

23. FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND SESSION

During the nine months between the first and the second session, a proposed new statute is drafted by a commission coordinated by the secretary. This work takes into account the indications arising from debates in assemblies held in various countries of central and Eastern Europe and, in particular, in Moscow and Kiev.

There are, moreover, continued efforts by the party and its militants to aggregate in central and Eastern Europe and other countries the highest number of parliamentarians and citizens around the "New Party" project.

The persistence and extent of the economic-financial crisis leads to the suspension of the newspaper.

On the other hand, the party is aware that at this point only Italy and its citizens, with their memberships, can decree the success of the radical "gamble" by ensuring adequate financial resources.

With this in mind, a seminar was held in Sabaudia in September of last year, with the participation of many Italian MP members, during which the party offered itself to Italy and to its ruling class as a meeting place, a forum for debate which could be particularly suited to favour the resolution of the Italian crisis, which in many aspects is a crisis of our time and of our society.

Thus starts a patient toil of gathering consensus from Italian MPs and government people around the radical project, with the objective of letting political conditions grow to maturity for the launch of a new and ambitious campaign of memberships and subscriptions, reaping the fruits of years of activity but also capitalizing on the opportunity offered by the severe crisis of the regime.

A start is also made on the political and organizational preparation for the Congress. Besides having to be as representative as possible, the latter must now meet the requirements of a party which has more members in Moscow than in Rome, which has sections in at least seven countries of central and Eastern Europe, which counts among its members hundreds upon hundreds of democratic legislators who are also members of 80 national parties.

Under the heading of this activity - which mobilizes the whole party structure - we can place the trip I made with Emma to Sarajevo at the end of this January, to ask the Mayor Muhamed Kresevljakovic to participate in the sessions of our Congress. I want to remember him here, forcefully so, and thank once again here this dear friend of ours. He was prevented from participating to the Congress, but his presence in Italy at the end of February was very important during the conclusive phase of the membership campaign, whose success enables us to be now gathered here.

24. THE SECOND SESSION

The decisions made at the second session of the Congress, at the time so dramatic, were taken at a moment where the party's proposals and projects are becoming ever more concrete. The analyses with respect to the situation of crisis which all regions of the world are facing are revealed to be exact. Thus the need to give life to a new political subject is confirmed. A transnational and transparty subject, capable of producing initiatives and activities aimed at influencing important aspects of these situations through rule of law and nonviolence, investing its human and financial resources.

Congress, faced with this reality, sets for the existence of the party the ultimate, "impossible" terms which we are all familiar with.

25. THE REASONS FOR "THIS" ADDRESS

Dearest friends,

there are two reasons why I have overcome my qualms as to the appropriateness of this address of mine. Two reasons, but they are interconnected and interdependent.

The first is the awareness of a great, extraordinary objective we have at first indicated, then fully outlined, and at last positively achieved.

The second reason is the belief that without the availability of the entire patrimony acquired by the party during all of its history, we could have never met and achieved this result.

The objective, the "New Party", the party with Gandhi's effigy, is already a reality which - if so desired - can be identified even without using the qualifiers "transnational and transparty".

Here in Sofia we are celebrating the constitution of this reality, also at the formal level, and your presence - parliamentary friends - in such numbers, extent and richness, is an immediate and direct testimony.

The second reason is less obvious, more recondite. I have wanted to underscore the value, weight and force of the patrimony accumulated by the party by retracing the course taken over almost 30 years. I do not know whether and to what extent the attempt was successful, given - among other things - the difficulty of communicating with experiences as diverse and far away as those which many of you have, having had little or nothing to do thus far with our history.

Nevertheless, I believe that the awareness of possessing this patrimony and being able to draw on it bears importantly on the party, endowing it with all of the potentiality and capability necessary to confront the upcoming difficulties, which are many. Thus I would be satisfied if this address was able even minimally to hold your attention or even just your curiosity.

It took great commitment and effort to overcome the resistances generated by more than 20 years of a track record marked by important successes in the Italian "national" arena, and thus manage to "free" ourselves of this preeminent character of our essence as a political force. On the other hand, this was a necessary condition in order to dispose of all the energies, the resources, the party's will, and thus lend life and body to the "New Party".

It was a heavy burden for the Italian members, for militants and leadership irrespective of the positions and roles played by each and everyone. A burden which had in its economic and financial implications its most obvious moments and aspects, but which in fact weighed most heavily and more significantly on the political, personal and collective data which marked the life of the party in the years between the 34th Congress in Bologna and today.

The price we had to pay was first of all the loss of much of the leadership group - we cannot and must not forget this. It was also the waiting, silent and solitary, often full of anguish, with the awareness that we had to estrange ourselves from Italian current political affairs, always so pressing and all-embracing. It was a price that has united all those of us who shared - at different times and in different conditions - the responsibilities and activities of government and party management.

The burden was the inevitable consequence of the impact of the party with its own history. But it is precisely the ideas, principles and values of this history which were able to demand and obtain the price paid, a price which on the other hand has allowed us to endow the "New Party" with the full patrimony of our past.

This patrimony is today, with a touch of pride, being entrusted to us, to you - with the new statute, the new organs, the initiatives underway and the new propositions - by those who had the possibility and the good fortune to safeguard it.

The task is accomplished. The "New Party" is here, it exists, without any further prejudicial reservation. A new and no less exacting task awaits us, awaits you: guaranteeing the life and success of the "New Party" with renewed and more adequate energies, resources and willpower.

To this end it seems important to me - and it is also why I attempted this contribution - that all those who belong to the party with the effigy of Gandhi be aware that they are not the result of an improvisation, be it successful, enacted to allow the Radical Party to escape failure in Italy as a political force within the party power system and to thus save the political destiny of a few people. We all partake of a political destiny which goes back a long way, and which was once again able to let values and principles prevail over short-term considerations, risking without reservations by continually and concretely putting its own existence on the line. A destiny which should hence be able to offer a perspective of affirmation and development of democracy and civility which ought to be the pride of Europe,of the West, of humanity and which is instead daily scorned and trampled all over the world.

This address of mine is above all dedicated to you, dear friends of the countries of central and Eastern Europe. To you, towards whom the party has, since unsuspected times, turned its attention and interest with great commitment and effort. With our initiative we have of course had to and wanted to engage your attention and solicit your own commitment, but aware as you must also be that you have never been and are not "rescue objects" nor, on our side, objects of misplaced hopes for return on investment.

We have asked you and we ask you to be our full-time and equal partners in an extremely hard and difficult but involving and extraordinary enterprise. This, and only this, is what we all need. Your contribution, your engagement is today more than ever required by the party, with its 38.000 memberships in Italy. A growth of over 10 times the average membership over the past 10 years is in and of itself an absolute novelty factor for the party, which the party must take into account. It is a result that takes us, in and of itself, into a new, different dimension. From the thousands we have moved into the tens of thousands (another order of magnitude in mathematical terms) implying substantially different management requirements which cannot but call into immediate question the matter of wider horizons, new spaces and equilibria.

Such a growth factor, if examined with due attention in the light of what has already been achieved in central and Eastern Europe, and if followed by a stronger, more decisive and direct engagement on your behalf, can and should unite the party around the issue of what to do.

Emma Bonino will present a platform of initiatives and activities as a basis for the action program for the next 18 months, until the next Congress.

We will realize that these last months have not been spent in idleness. Much work has gone into building a framework of innovative, specific and pertinent proposals. The problem has been the setting of strict priorities before making choices which must be consistent with the importance and urgency of political current affairs, but also with the available or acquirable resources.

The major difficulties will be due to an excess rather than a lack of proposals.

Paolo Vigevano will provide the data pertaining to the economic and financial situation, complete as always by ample and exhaustive considerations on constraints and possible alternatives.

To conclude we will briefly touch on two aspects of the party's situation today: first the party's actual status, and then the political perspective.

Today we are able to count on a group of young men and women who acquired their training during these years, dedicating themselves with perseverence and continuity to party work, and who are now able to take on bigger and more precise responsibilities. They are few, and all Italians except for Dupuis. As capable as they may be - and they are - they cannot by themselves provide the assistance required by the secretary and treasurer, above all. The problem of human resources is thus posed in wide-ranging and general terms. To my mind, it is the most important, most delicate and most urgent aspect of the party's status today.

The party is "new", but it cannot continue to be so and will not be so if it cannot acquire and depend upon a new, adequate leadership.

Of the hundreds of parliamentarians who took membership over the last 2 years, including the Italians, very few - not to say nobody - have proved willing and able to concretely and actively contribute to party management, with the dedication and continuity that is required.

In the countries of central and Eastern Europe only few members, including some former parliamentarians, give their precious contribution to the initiative and organization of the party. The weight carried by Italian and western militants is still preeminent.

The essential purport of this lack needs to be underscored. It is during these days that solutions should be looked for, and immediately strengthened by precise proposals and clear offers of availability. It is time for coming forward with proposals and with one's own candidature, ready to bear both the honour and the burden that comes with it. It is first of all essential that the parliamentarians undertake precise commitments and clear responsibilities.

The other aspect, relative to the political prospects, is not separate or extraneous to the question of the formation of a new leadership.

The international situation as a whole, in its diverse components and aspects, is an essential reference point for a party who is and wants to be transnational. This is obvious but worth remembering.

I certainly do not want to cover all that ground here. I merely wish to underscore one characteristic which in the light of the most recent events has engaged everyone's attention and sensitivity and which forcefully reproposes one of the values which have most marked our history. "For the life of rights, for the right to life" is its time-honored, concise expression.

Working with the objective of building up ever richer elements of international law has become every day, at every moment, the first cause of our commom hope. This objective requires first of all identifying the fora where such law becomes rules and regulations, and then the constitution of powers able to enforce rules and regulations.

Turning to existing organisms, first of which the UN, is an imperative. How can a limited force like ours contribute to initiating and operating a process designed to address and positively solve this enormous question?

Once again, an objective of "extraordinary" ambition and importance, an objective all of our own, "impossible" rather than "improbable" and thus truly radical.

Emma Bonino will address this topic too, in the light of a careful examination which has already been started and of the first verifications she has operated.

This question alone opens for the party a perspective of tremendously difficult political initiative and struggle, but one that is exciting above all others.

This perspective may imply new structures and different organizational set-ups, and in any case once again calls for new operational resources, new leadership abilities, wider and different equilibria, as well as more money.

The relationship with members in Italy and with the yet indispensible quality of their contribution; the renewed attention to the presence of the party in the western countries; the capacity for growth in the countries of central and eastern Europe, with the constitution, dear friends, of effectively autonomous positions - in financial terms as well. These are the real terms of the debate and confrontation these days, so that the choices and decisions made may be the most corresponding to our, your tomorrow.

I conclude with the awareness that the task facing the party's new organs is considerably more complex and burdensome than what has up to now been met and overcome, but also with the conviction that an extraordinary opportunity is offered by a history, by a heritage of initiatives and struggles, by willpower and ability, by a force which has been and still is remarkable.

Dear friends, in thanking you and, through you, the party, for all it has given me, I can at this point only assure you that I am ready as ever, as long as mind and energies hold out, to offer my contribution to you and to the party, if and when and in whatever terms you should want it.