The project: a letter addressed to all the members of Parliament of all the democratic countries of the world. Approximately 60,000! The reason? Following, Marco Pannella's explanation during a debate on Radio Radicale.
The programme, the document, the reason for joining the 1991 Radical Party, is a sort of editorial project. As a matter of fact, the problem is to seek an adequate medium to solve the most vital problems of our lives and of the life of our planet today, in a matter of weeks, months and years, that is, in the short run.
The goal is extremely ambitious. It is an unprecedented ambition, and I'm saying so with all the awareness this statement calls for, because the 1991 Radical Party will form itself in the attempt to overcome - not only from the difficult point of view of conscience and awareness, but also from the point of view of the means - the dichotomy between knowledge (science) and conscience on the one hand, and politics and power on the other hand.
The project consists of providing a mass medium to a political program whose initial aim is that of succeeding in establishing a party of action, by means of a few thousand Italian memberships - owing to the fact that Italians are more easily reached thanks to the Radical Party's history and roots. We all realize that the problem today is to use the incredible bulk of notions, science, and knowledge we have acquired in the last forty years - superior to all the knowledge mankind had accumulated over thousands of years - with the purpose of improving the quality of life and promoting life itself, and, if possible, of healing the wounds of the biosphere, the atmosphere, the water and the earth, which many scientists already judge to be lethal.
What is the aim of this insane project? It is to get in touch, in a few weeks - let's imagine by means of an editorial enterprise, which is however impossible for any publishing firm, and any force, perhaps possible only for a State - with all the members of Parliament of all the democratic countries of the world (between 50 and 60 thousand), who speak about forty languages; we would submit legislative texts, general and specific goals as well as goals relating to positive law to them, which should then be deposited, at the same hour of the same day, in the places where institutional decisions are taken: this would finally allow us Gandhian non-violents for life to resume or to begin on a mass basis our demonstrations, hunger strikes and nonviolent initiatives in dozens of capitals of the world (starting with the European ones) to urge the voting of those measures and those laws.
For example, we could establish a radical association of members of parliament against the death penalty, against torture, operating like the CORA (Radical Antiprohibitionist Coordination), as a means of coordination, information and animation. As far as ecological security is concerned, we must pursue two or three specific targets. Our proposal to give compulsory force to international law and to reform the United Nations must be relaunched.
We must do the same thing we did for divorce, only now we must do it from the point of view of the survival of the world. Back then, everyone knew what divorce was, but no one imagined it would have become an institutional and political reality in our country, and it would not have become such without the Radical Party.
