"First Secretary Sergio Stanzani and Treasurer Paolo Vigevano met with RP President Emma Bonino and President of the Federal Council Marco Pannella, and after expressions of disenchantment with the political and institutional situation in Italy and that of the Radical Party, agreed that there can no further delay in putting into effect provisions by the Congress and Federal Council for the special management of the Party by them".

Thus, on December 14, the decision was communicated that, by the end of the year the proposals included in the closing document of the Congress in Budapest in April 1989 be put into effect: "The Congress consequently delegates all statutory powers to the First Secretary, the Treasurer, jointly with the President of the Party and the President of the Federal Council, for all decisions relative to the life and patrimony of the Radical Party, in the case that our resistance is overcome. Thus, with this transitory and final norm, the Party Statute is modified."

It is the inevitable response to the wall of censorship which has been created by the mass media, in particular in Italy, as regards the Radical Party. Thus, while in the East the barriers of totalitarian regimes constructed in the vain attempt to prevent the advent of democracy are falling, in the West the monopolistic control of the mass media imposes silence on any attempts made to denounce the authoritarian involution being carried out by political parties which in many countries are indistinguishable from the State itself, or the corruption of society caused by the so-called war on drugs.

The announcement of the Radical Party is not one of mourning, but of hope: "The special administration of the Radical Party will have as its objective and justification the relaunching also in Italy, of the transparty, transnational Radical Party. Events of the past months in Italy and the world have made clear the necessary priority of any democratic struggle for Reform as a condition to its being correctly conceived and accomplished".

In fact, a political cycle which has lasted more than twenty years is ending, a cycle during which the Radical Party has been the center of the movement for the protection of civil rights, first in Italy and then--with its non-violent campaign against starvation and for the safeguarding of the right to life--in progressively extended political and geographic areas. But that Radical Party is no longer adequate to face the new challenges of the 1990s. The new transnational and trans-party Radical Party must be redefined, must have available new and greater resources, must above all be recognized by those who, with the fall of the Communist regimes, consider it even more intolerable that real democracy is in danger of providing of newer and more sophisticated forms of totalitarianism.