Dear friend,

With these first lines of the year, we would like to give you the latest news about the project we are working on, in the hope that it might interest and involve you.

1. The Radical Party now has members in 31 different countries. The Federal Council of the RP is composed of 115 parliamentarians from 18 democratic legislative Assemblies, as well as 7 members of Governments, and supporters of more than 50 Parties or national political groups.

For us, this is the embryo of that "transnational transparty" which we believe can and must come up with more effective answers to the complex historical and political problems that threaten to destroy our society and this era in which we live. But only if we act in time.

2. This result has been achieved by undertakings as humble and modest as they are committed and without precedent, for us who are trying to see them through with the sole force of our ideas and beliefs. Starting in July 1991, we have sent three (and now four) issues of "The New Party", a small newspaper in 15 different languages, to more than forty thousand parliamentarians and two hundred and fifty other people in about 60 countries. The newspaper is subject to the risk of translations from a single basic language, to postal delays, and to the problems - often unknown - involved in delivery, in "The New Party" being just one of thousands of communications received by parliamentary representatives in the respective countries.

3. Nevertheless, in just a few months members of Governments, parliamentary groups, and exponents of dozens of national Parties, often members of Socialist, Liberal or Christian Democrat Internationals, have immediately accepted, both with resolution and conviction, our invitation to participate in a political project that had only just been explained to them, and of which they had only then become aware.

4. The only explanation for this is, we feel, that the creation of a "transnational transparty" - which is what the Radical Party purports to be, and now is, with its particular semiology, its methods and its objectives - is the answer to a request, to a lack, to a common need for historical, cultural and political situations that are apparently different, if not actually extraneous, to those of today.

5. A Party that is founded on the complete freedom of its members and not on the sacrifice of freedom in the name of efficiency; that does not wish to represent them but intends to ensure the realization of that which, at a particular moment and in particular circumstances, they themselves decide must be attempted and pursued democratically, without requiring of them - unless they have undertaken to be responsible for carrying out the decision taken, for a given period - any binding agreement or obligation to persist in that decision.

6. We want to create a Party which postulates, rather than refuses, other liberal forms of commitment, of organizational involvement in "other" national or international Parties; which does not interpret political nonviolence as a means in itself but applies it to political projects that can no longer in any way be confused, either in theory or practice, with the various forms of real pacifism that have manifested themselves throughout history.

A Party which utilizes the means at its disposal rather than indulge in intolerant idealizing, a Party which practises tolerance. A Party, therefore, which is for freedom, tolerance, the resolution of social conflict, and democratic individuals.

All this may seem very difficult to understand but also very "easy" to adopt, to put into practice once it has been understood.

7. The history of the Radical Party, which has never been committed on a political and least of all ideological basis, being an "annual" Party - whose existence is not automatically protracted but (re)constituted because of a desire for "constitution", for membership, which is expressed in the choices concerning its activites that are made congressually and democratically each year - is "objectively", or perhaps we should say "genetically", speaking that of a strong organized movement for human, civil and political rights understood as the foundation of a country's laws and the true "federal" organization of federal units, according to the principle of delegation (which is the classic form of federalism): only that which cannot be "self-governed" by the more immediate and direct democratic institutional bodies of the federal units is delegated to the "superior" central unit.

8. We are talking about "history" not "ideology", and certainly not a remedy for all the ills that, naturally, beset this world and which are now becoming more of a "health-hazard" than ever. "A right to life and a life of rights" is, we feel, a legitimate and effective slogan for the RP, but it does not constitute an appropriate and precise commitment, neither is it representative or conclusive. It is simply not enough, if one has a serious and responsible attitude towards politics. But it helps.

9. The effort required to break through the linguistic, ethnic and state barriers in order to live, research, fight for and establish today - for the future but also for the present - the "transnational transparty" concept (particularly in societies governed by a coalition of proportional representation, or a bipartisan government that guarantees "alternation" rather than "alternatives" or "Reforms") in an organized manner is tremendous and, therefore, people have abandoned the undertaking, also from an ideological point of view, ever since "internationalism" generated its opposite (imperial rule in a large part of the world and oppression of the people) and cosmopolitanism ceased to be as revolutionary as it was in the Age of Enlightenment.

10. It is imperative that we make this effort (and the human, intellectual and material investment it will cost us) even if we only want to attempt to govern, with pragmatism and intellectual honesty, the dramatic social, ecological, economic, cultural, religious and demographic problems that are today manifesting themselves with increasing seriousness, in each and all of the countries in which we live, where we were either born or have chosen to reside.

11. Armed with these convictions and strengthened by our experiences during the past decades and in recent years, which were very often crowned with relative, and unexpected, success, we have managed to secure the financial and technological means necessary, even if not sufficient, to embark on a coherent political undertaking, starting with the appropriation of government financing destined for Parties represented in the Italian Parliament, and then the contribution made, in the form of membership and subscription fees, of efforts made and dedication shown, by about three thousand party activists and other members of the Radical Party in Italy.

12. Thus, we were able to set aside approx. five million dollars to constituting the "New Party", the transnational transparty, to establishing its activities, its program, its organization, and enabling it to get off the ground independently. However, as the Radical Party cannot, for obvious reasons, participate in the Italian elections and, therefore, be represented in Parliament (otherwise it would be running against the national Parties), from next spring onwards - when the Italian general elections will be held - we will no longer receive the financing we have been able to invest, according to decisions taken at our last ordinary Congress held in Budapest in 1989, up until now in the timely and necessary creation of the "transnational transparty".

13. In 1991, we had the chance to develop - during the two sessions of our Federal Council, the first of which was held in Rome and the second at Zagreb, and thanks to the leaders of the party being invested with special powers at the Congress - a number of exceptional and extremely important projects.

14. We are now in the process of conceiving and developing a project "to abolish the death penalty throughout the world by the year 2000". This is just one example of the Radical Party's desire to get things done and, if we are able to achieve our goal, which necessitates overcoming enormous difficulties, both actual and historical, the project will have even more "historic" consequences for humanity, in that it will strengthen international law, and the law itself.

15. We have found ourselves - being a Party that is by its very nature strictly federalist-democratic, anti-Jacobin, anti-centralist, convinced that individual and national "independence" is nothing but an illusion and dangerous suicide if it does not, in effect, constitute a choice of new forms of "interdependence" - defending and supporting, both consciously and responsibly, the new forms of "national" independence created democratically with an unconditional guarantee of internal democracy. We believe, in fact, that the federal and democratic organization of this world, and its various regions, has to be the result of a free and responsible choice, and not an excuse for imposing abstract ideas, that are sometimes valid, as a form of antidemocratic oppression.

16. We are prepared to contest the warmongering, racism and totalitarianism of the usurping Army and the present Serbian leaders, and the damage inflicted on Croatia, Slovenia and Kosovo, which has been condoned by the West, the majority of European countries, and the US in particular, with an attitude similar to that which in the Thirties fostered the rise of Nazism, Facism and Stalinism (and "real" Communism up until the present years). In order to combat this situation, we have started to present identical parliamentary motions simultaneously and embarked on nonviolent undertakings such as the hunger strikes endured by numerous parliamentary colleagues, in various countries.

17. We have now used up almost all the capital we had to invest in our "transnational transparty" project. For the moment, we still have enough money to deliver the fifth issue of "The New Party" by mid-February (almost two months are needed from the time the articles are written and translated, and the newspaper itself is printed, sent out and delivered, in most countries), which will include a summary of the previous issues. If we receive an extraordinary number of positive replies to the fourth issue, which has just been delivered, and also to the fifth, we will just be able to continue with the project.

18. If only hundreds of the sixty thousand parliamentarians and important figures to whom this letter is addressed become members of the Radical Party - whose members have increased from about 20 deputies and senators to over 100 in a few weeks - the mass media will most probably feel obliged to inform the public of this "strange" phenomenon. In doing so, they will allow us to reach our target of fifty thousand "Italian" members, paying membership or subscription fees which, according to our calculations, would guarantee our being able to continue to build the Radical Party into a "transnational transparty" political force.

19. This is what is at stake.

We are, therefore, asking you, as a friend, to let us know immediately if you will join the Radical Party (you can do this by filling in the coupon on the last page of this letter). Your membership will be for the year 1992, for a brief period of your life, of your personal history and ours. In our taking direct nonviolent action together, we could maybe create and uphold, in the Parliaments and the city squares, a different future for this planet.

We would like to thank you in advance for reading this letter and for anything you might do to help us with our project, which in itself can be considered as a favourable omen, coming from someone who perhaps up until yesterday thought our ideas too far removed, or from someone whose ideas we ourselves thought too far removed, or too extraneous.

We wish you all good things for 1992, and we also extend these wishes to the people who are dear to you, to those who love and respect you.

With very best regards.

Rome, 2 January, 1992

Emma Bonino Marco Pannella Sergio Stanzani Paolo Vigevano

(President) (President of the FC) (First Secretary) (Treasurer)