Address sent to the 3rd Italian Congress of the Radical Party from Basil Guissou, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Burkina Faso, member of the Radical party's Federal Council.

Dear Radical comrades,

the Radical Association for the Legal State in Africa (A.R.E.D.A.) has been legally recognized in Burkina Faso on 13 April 1990, with authorization No.100 - Year VII, of the Ministry for Territorial Administration. The membership fee amounts to 750 African francs, that is, about $3 dollars. To date our association consists of over thirty members, including university teachers, economists, bank clerks, small and medium contractors, workers.

Burkina Faso will soon vote for a new Constitution which aims at establishing a Legal State. The constitutional referendum is scheduled for the month of April 1991.

In its 1st Article, the Constitution states: "All Burkinabé are born free and with equal rights. All have the opportunity to enjoy all the rights and all the liberties guarantied by the present Constitution. Any discrimination is prohibited; especially discrimination on grounds of race, ethnical belonging, region, colour, sex, language, religion, caste, political opinions, wealth and origin".

The article states: "The freedom of belief or non-belief, the freedom of conscience, of religious and philosophic opinion, of exertion of creed, freedom of association, as well as freedom to organize demonstrations and processions are guarantied by the present Constitution".

Article 99 underlines that: "the people exert legislative initiatives through popular petitions with draft bills signed by at least 15.000 people having the right to vote. The petition is then forwarded to the Assembly of the deputies of the people".

As far as the United States of Africa are concerned, a topic cherished by us radicals, the draft Constitution states in Article 149: "Burkina Faso may sign agreements of association or community involving a total or partial renouncement of sovereignty with all African States".

During the popular meeting in which the constitution project was discussed, the right to civil disobedience to uphold the Constitution was recognized.

The Radicals of Burkina firmly believe in and operate for the right to life and the life of rights. This is why we are launching an Appeal to all our African, Italian and European friends and comrades, asking them to support us in our work.

We urge them to join the party, to help us build this Radical Party, to support the idea of the Transnational Party as a new vision of politics, against any form of nationalism and against imperialism.

All African countries are overburdened by the weight of their foreign debt, which continues to strangle our economies, already tried by prolonged droughts, as in the Sahel region. Hunger, ignorance and disease kill hundreds of thousands of children and adults every day, amid the indifference of the developed and wealthy countries.

Here in Africa we must face these problems every day, and we try to react against this state of affairs; our Association is consolidating itself, and we hope to have at least 100 members by the end of January 1991.

At present we dispose of an office where all the comrades who wish to can come and give as a hand as militants. It consist of two rooms and a spacious terrace (30 square metres). However, for the moment the office lacks a telephone, because installing a telephone network is too expensive and we cannot afford it in the present circumstances. Ours needs are simple, but difficult to satisfy in the context of Burkina.

We ask for the help and the contribution of all comrades: the items we need are: about thirty chairs, a fan, two cupboards to store files and documents, a typing machine, a fax machine, a computer with a printer and a modem, a photocopying machine and assorted stationery. Any contribution, even the smallest one, will be extremely precious!

JOIN THE RADICAL PARTY, JOIN A.R.E.D.A.

Persons who wish to help the Radicals of Burkina can send a contribution (specifying the destination on the back of the postal order) to the headquarters of the Radical Party in Budapest, whence it shall be forwarded to Ouagadougou as soon as possible.