SUMMARY: Marco Pannella is on hunger strike for 90 days to urge Rai-Tv to broadcast a 15-minutes program devoted to the LID and another one to Dom Franzoni; to urge the President of the Republic, Giovanni Leone, to receive a PR delegation; to urge the Italian Parliament to guarantee the regular-time discussion on the abortion bill and on the right to vote for people who have reached age 18; to urge the owners of the daily newspaper Il Messaggero to guarantee the respect of the democratic and secular positions of its editors. With the publishing of an article on "Il Corriere della Sera" as an "open forum" contribution [text n. 1356], Pier Paolo Pasolini cracks the heavy silence around the radical initiative."L'Espresso asked Leonardo Sciascia and Alberto Moravia their comments regarding the radical leader Marco Pannella and his political strategy. Sciascia says that "Every request advanced by Pannella is rightful; so as it appropriate for him to advance them. However, a great political Party [the PCI] could n

ot be mad for freedom , as Pannella says about himself in the interview published on Il Mondo . This Party is not even allowed to face freedom in an absolute way, but it can only reasonably appreciate the different kinds of freedom, then make its own decisions, gradually and carefully choosing among them." Moravia says that the fasting endeavor pursued by Pannella represents the need "to forget sometime about politics and to move instead toward what, even if not befitting on the political level, is right according to justice."

(L'ESPRESSO, June 28, 1974)

Leonardo Sciascia (1)

I fully agree with Pannella (2) when he says that the attempts to achieve freedom should be more numerous, with less failures. But the empathy and respect I have for every attempt of this kind, including the one he is now pursuing, does not stop me from openly disagree, when disagreement is there. Regarding his undertaking, first of all I dislike the idea of fasting itself. It seems obscured by a certain kind of mysticism which sounds suspicious to me. Why re-creating a privation which we have suffered for centuries as a constraint in both this world and the other one as a civil protest? In the past there are so many centuries of involuntary fasting that today I cannot appreciate a voluntary hunger strike. More precisely, in the past of millions and millions of Italians - who in fact are quite indiffirent to the Pannella fasting, even when they are informed about it, or else they place it into an anachronistic need for sanctification. Nor it is possible to ascribe to the consumer age the popular distance fr

om such a kind of protest: more simply, it is only a matter of disliking fasting itself, a sort of fear about fasting. One of the great wonders that Pulcinella acquired from the French was that for them fasting was represented in their breakfast, that is, eating, while for us it was the ancient and dark famine. Today the question, for millions and millions of Italians, is to never having to face fasting again. We can argue as much and as long as we like against the Partito Comunista Italiano: but it is no doubt that it does represent this essential need for Italians and that it is working to solve this problem. We can stand on PCI left, go beyond ourselvs and be taken over, run toward more and more leftist illusions; however, in the effort of avoiding new fastings for Italians, I do not believe we could be more responsible and positive than the PCI is today.

Every request advanced by Pannella is rightful; so as it appropriate for him to advance them. However, a great political Party [the PCI] could not be mad for freedom , as Pannella says about himself in the interview published on Il Mondo (3). This Party is not even allowed to face freedom in an absolute way, but it can only reasonably appreciate the different kinds of freedom, then make its own decisions, gradually and carefully choosing among them. Otherwise the risk is to loose them all, because people who love freedom are much more in number than those who don't.

Alberto Moravia (4)

I am not interested in learning if the tool of fasting is right or wrong, if Pannella is right or wrong in using it, both in the specific case or in general. What I am interested in is the following aspect of the issue. Italy lacks in idealistic outburst. Elsewhere those idealistic outbursts can also reach an extravagant behavior, or even madness. The non-conventional attitude of the Anglo-Saxons, for instance, does not disdain the most courageous actions. Instead, in Italy we are always sticking to realism; and it's well known that with realism all of us can easily be very customary in our thinking, although never as a Don Quichote. Now, what kind of urgency is Pannella pointing to with his fasting?

It is the need to forget sometime about politics and to move instead toward what, even if not befitting on the political level, is right according to justice. I disagree with Pasolini (5) about the idea that the DC and the PCI are the two big defeated parties by the referendum; I'd better say that the referendum defeated politics intended as an activity enclosed in itself, that is, as the only chief character on the stage of history. The victory at the referendum has reached "something" which is not actually political: this is clearly obvious in that all the political parties, after that referendum, have had to adjust their guide-lines according to this "something".

In that sense, Pannella has achieved a clear victory, although it is untrue that the PCI has been defeated. Regarding this fasting, it belongs to the non-traditional tools of minorities, idealists, non-conformists, and generally to those who are not involved in actual politics and who oppose, in our modern world populated by masses and not by elites, that tendency in politics on conformism, tied to common sense and, above all, majority expression. The fact that Lloyd George let the mayor of Cork to die of hunger is absolutely not a proof against fasting as a political tool. We have to see when, against who, in which circumstances someone uses the fasting tool. Concerning Marco Pannella case, his fasting has been a political tool fully supported by the Machiavellian sense of Italian politics, both in general and in his specific case. While every other Party, pretending to fight pro or con the divorce, actually was fighting for something else (as they themselves let people understand and eventually admitted wi

th no problem), Pannella was fighting exactly for the divorce issue and for anything else but the divorce issue. The actuality of this goal has pushed Pannella to use fasting to affirm his right to communicate with the power-in-charge as well as with the masses.

Translator's notes:

(1) SCIASCIA LEONARDO. (Racalmuto 1921 - Palermo 1990). Writer and author of several famous novels ("Le parrocchie di Regalpetra", 1956; "Il giorno della civetta, 1961; Todo modo, 1974), but also known as a polemist, he took active part in the Italian civil life for at least twenty years. During one legislature (1979-1983) he was also radical member of Parliament, actively intervening in civil rights campaigns (Tortora case, etc.).

(2) PANNELLA MARCO. Pannella Giacinto, known as Marco. (Teramo 1930). Currently President of the Radical Party's Federal Council, which he is one of the founders of. At twenty national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty-two President of the UGI, the union of lay university students, at twenty-three President of the UNURI, national union of Italian university students. At twenty-four he advocates, in the context of the students' movement and of the Liberal party, the foundation of the new radical party, which arises in 1954 following the confluence of prestigious intellectuals and minor democratic political groups. He is active in the party, except for a period (1960-1963) in which he is correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he established contacts with the Algerian resistance. Back in Italy, he commits himself to the reconstruction of the radical Party, dissolved by its leadership following the advent of the centre-left. Under his indisputable leadership, the party succeeds in

promoting (and winning) relevant civil rights battles, working for the introduction of divorce, conscientious objection, important reforms of family law, etc, in Italy. He struggles for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. Arrested in Sofia in 1968 as he is demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia, which has been invaded by Stalin. He opens the party to the newly-born homosexual organizations (FUORI), promotes the formation of the first environmentalist groups. The new radical party organizes difficult campaigns, proposing several referendums (about twenty throughout the years) for the moralization of the country and of politics, against public funds to the parties, against nuclear plants, etc., but in particular for a deep renewal of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all carried out with strictly nonviolent methods according to the Gandhian model - but Pannella's Gandhi is neither a mystic nor an ideologue; rather, an intransigent and yet flexible politician - h

e has been through trials which he has for the most part won. As of 1976, year in which he first runs for Parliament, he is always elected at the Chamber of Deputies, twice at the Senate, twice at the European Parliament. Several times candidates and local councillor in Rome, Naples, Trieste, Catania, where he carried out exemplary and demonstrative campaigns and initiatives. Whenever necessary, he has resorted to the weapon of the hunger strike, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in particular during the major campaign against world hunger, for which he mobilized one hundred Nobel laureates and preeminent personalities in the fields of science and culture in order to obtain a radical change in the management of the funds allotted to developing countries. On 30 September 1981 he obtains at the European parliament the passage of a resolution in this sense, and after it several other similar laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliament. In January 1987 he runs for President of the European Parliament, obtaini

ng 61 votes. Currently, as the radical party has pledged to no longer compete with its own lists in national elections, he is striving for the creation of a "transnational" cross-party, in view of a federal development of the United States of Europe and with the objective of promoting civil rights throughout the world.

(3) L MONDO. Political and cultural weekly magazine, established in Rome by Mario Pannunzio. For seventeen years it was the expression and the symbol of the best lay, liberal, radical and democratic Italian tradition. Most of its journalists participated in the foundation of the radical Party. Ceased publications in 1966, was taken over by Arrigo Benedetti in 1969. Subsequently became an economic magazine.

(4) MORAVIA ALBERTO. Nickname for PINCHERLE ALBERTO (Rome 1907 - 1989). Italian writer, essayst and editorialist. "Gli indifferenti" (1929), "La Ciociara" (1957), "Io e lui" (1971), "1934"(1982).

(5) PASOLINI PIERPAOLO. (Bologna 1922 - Rome 1975). Italian writer and director. Novels ("Ragazzi di vita", 1955; "Una vita violenta", 1959), verse ("Le ceneri di Gramsci", 1957, etc.), plays, cinema ("Accattone", 1961, "Il Vangelo secondo Matteo", 1964, etc.), but especially powerful polemist and moralist, he denounced the evils of the "bourgeoisie" and severely criticized the Italian Left for its shortcomings. Sympathizer of the Radical Party, on the subject of which he wrote some beautiful pages, the day after his death he was supposed to go to Florence to take part in a congress of the party.