by Sandro Ottoni

(Radical Party Federal Councillor)

Perhaps only daily Soviet reality can be compared to the current of new resistence and incentives running accross Yugoslavia also. Nationalism and Communism, federal reality, separatism and centralization, ethnic and religious conflict, eighteenth century rivality, reformism and conservatism: the great Balkan cauldron seems to be on the boil again as it was during the period of Habsburg decline. The palm of advanced, anti-dogmatic and reformist socialism has been lost for sometime, and Yugoslavia was astonished and perplexed by the upheavals in the other Communist countries. Then, little by little, partly as an example and partly from fear, even the slow Communist Yugoslav bureaucracies started to grant what was being ripped from them elsewhere by enormous movements of power, by - "candle-light revolutions".

And thus in Slovenia, the Communist party which had even heralded a prudent but decisive democratic reform especially entrusted to the Socialist Youth Movement, was obliged to speed up its transformation process to the point of changing its own name and its symbol in the past few months, in view of the forthcoming elections. In recent months, a round table with the opposition parties has defined the procedures for free pluralist elections.

"Europe now" is the slogan with which the Slovenian ex-Communists, today the Party of Democratic Renewal, will run at the elections. It is a very familiar slogan to the Radicals, which has seen the Radical Party as protagonist in demonstrations in Brussels and in all Europe and it is the same slogan which two years ago all over the walls in Ljubliana greeted the first public meeting to be organized by the Radical Party. Surely this is a meaningful coincidence. Perhaps to this is owed that fact that for the first time it was possible to arrange an official meeting on the highest level, precisely with this Yugoslav party, between a Radical delegation (Stanzani, Bonino and Panella), and a delegation of the renewed party (President Ribicic, and the members of the presidency, Juratovec, Bekes...)

In Croatia too, the Communist party came face to face, in a much wearier fashion, with the new democratic requests. It has only been in the past few months that an electoral law has been prepared from "above" which will enable the democratic handling of the Republic's forthcoming elections, planned for April 14.

Among the new recently legalized political parties and associations, is the Radical Association for the United States of Europe (R.U.S.E.D.) with Vito Cesmadziski, Secretary, (a member of the Federal Council of the Radical Party), Zeljko Rosko, Deputy Secretary and who is also a journalist, and Zoran Juricin, Treasurer.

On the initiatives of these and other Croatian Radicals (today there are 55 members enroled in the Radical Party in Croatia), an electoral list is being drawn up, called the European Federalist nonviolent and green list, which unites various components of the Croatian political world. In particular, this electoral coalition includes elements of the disolved "Croatian Socialist Youth", spokesmen from the Greens, Femminists and other groups. At the same time, the Croatian Radicals are promoting the collection of signatures for a petition to the Croatian and Yugoslav authorities and the European Parliament. This petition asks for all the necessary deliberations to be adopted for the purpose of allowing Yugoslavia to join the European community, "as a first step to forming the United States of Europe. These initiatives were publicly presented at Zagreb by Marco Pannella, in a very crowded public meeting which drew a great deal of attention from the media.

In the last few days, work is under way to launch a great enrolment campaign which is certainly boosted by the interest of the mass media, the imminence of the elections and above all by the originality of the Radical proposal, particularly in its transpartite aspect.