ABSTRACT: Free elections? Thirty years of "democracy" have exterminated more antifascists than fascism itself. A plot is being prepared in the palace against the sovereign people, to prevent them from being informed and from deliberating. Pertini is silent, he reigns and consents. The parliamentary committee of control on the RAI - a band of truth killers - abolishes party political broadcasts to exclude the Radical Party and the ex favourites of the PDUP (1) from the electoral campaign. The Radicals request obvious things: that all competitors be given the same number of minutes for propaganda and debate, and that the order of the addresses be decided by draw. For twenty years we endured this state of affairs; but now we cannot continue in the direction of resignation and renouncement. In the very little time which remains, Pannella announces he has postponed the beginning of an "all-out" hunger and thirst strike in order to enable dozens of thousands of people to support these simple requests by sending a

telegram to the Radical Party.

(CORRIERE DELLA SERA, 14 May 1976)

I accuse those whom we have loved the most; I accuse those from whom we have learnt most; I accuse the old men full of honours, who have betrayed their and our truths, for the spectacle of vile silence on the ruin of the Republic and of its laws which they are giving.

I accuse Pertini (2) as a representative of all of them: he is the best, and he can give us nothing but indecent confessions of insomnia from the beds of injustice of a Parliament which is sinking deep into disgrace. For the rest, he too is silent, he reigns and consents.

Thirty years of "democracy" have exterminated more fascists than fascism itself. The Resistance is dead, first of all in the hearts and in the minds of its survived leaders. Its ideas are but skeletal memories. For these heroes of the past, the things accomplished have become an alibi for their omissions, for an easy clean conscience, and for moralism without morality. That which remains of them is the torment which their sight prompts in us. Our days go out, overwhelmed by the long "pietas" toward these birds captured by the enemy.

It is a thirty-year-old history; it is the precipice of the terrible history of these hours. The Constitution, which Piero Calamandrei (3) was the civil poet of, finds in those who wanted it those who make havoc of its every day. It is unapplied, and even more lacerated in the points where it had finally become law. Yesterday the teachers died in the solitude of their desks, or as witnesses in the prisons of dissent. Today they teach cynicism and betrayal in the corridors of the palace. A palace plot is being prepared; the succession of the opposition is being prepared so as to ensure a sovereign in any case. As long as the people are kept away.

I accuse this Parliament of fascism, of betrayal of the Constitution, of attempt on the popular sovereignty. In the court of our consciences of citizens, thousands of pages of proceedings are already written. Already it is a sign of tremendous responsibility; for too long, we degraded ourselves to the role of accountants or archivists of the ruins and of the massacres of laws and people, of the violences which were inflicted on us. But let us come to the last page, the one against which we will struggle with our all forces to delete it before the crime is committed.

On May 7, the Parliamentary Committee of Control on the RAI confirmed that it is nothing but a band of truth killers, of robbers of justice, a criminal racket that wants to seize the legality. It immediately avenged itself on us, but especially against the democratic public opinion, for having been forced, these past days, to finally pass a regulation for a liberal access to the RAI, and for having been forced to yield and acknowledge its previous, ultradecennial thefts of legality and truth. The readers of this newspaper, as the readers of other newspapers, have been informed, by way of exception, of this umpteenth nonviolent battle of ours to achieve a democratic information, to reinstate the republican legality in the fundamental field of the public monopoly of the RAI, for the civil right to be informed in order to choose and deliberate. This is how we have all been rewarded for having engaged in this battle and won it.

Given that at this point, we would have had immediate right of access to "party political broadcasts", the latter have been suddenly abolished. In its place, a series of daily "press meetings" has been devised, reserved to "parliamentary groups", that is, to everyone except us and the ex favourites of the PDUP. Every evening, they broadcast pre-electoral information; we have been told that we are excluded from it because we still haven't presented our lists. But the law prevents us from doing so, and obviously even the parties admitted to this propaganda haven't done so. From now until June 18, this will enable us to have access to the RAI on two occasions only, for a total of about half an hour: precisely on 24 May and 4 June, intervening the first, so that all the others, disposing of more than double or treble the time given to us, may then comfortably delete every message or signal we will have managed to transmit and leave, after years of fierce censorship and political confinement. We, and anyone else

who does not belong to the racket of public information, will therefore be totally excluded from the central, decisive phase of the campaign, that is from June 4 on.

But all this has been judged inadequate. Forced to formally succumb to the law in the previous days, forced to finally enact the "reform" on paper, the representatives of the PCI and of the DC, of the MSI and of the PSI, of the PRI, of the PSDI and PLI, have equally thought of further guaranteeing for themselves the victory and the division of the citizens' votes and rights. One more effort, they must have said to themselves, and we've made it for five more years. Thus, they made the most incredible, the most literally fascist (fascist of the National Fascist Party) of decisions, and unanimously. Every free political and journalistic information was officially suppressed. The RAI was silenced at all levels: any news directly or indirectly pertaining to the elections, the source of which was other than the government, was to be censored. It could later be recovered, under the direct control of the committee (that is, of the parties of the racket), and included in a one-hour program, a real ghetto of the democ

ratic rules, which would then be broadcast late in the evening, with criteria and choices decided only by the committee itself. Political information, in other words, has been suppressed to make space for a regime program. There is more, but we haven't the space to make up for the insufficient information; the only thing we will add is that the committee has even explicitly banned Dario Fo (4), and song writers suspected of having leftist opinions, from the television screen. It took almost a week, the announcement of our new complete hunger strike, the notification of its objectives (the immediate reinstatement of legality and justice) for someone else to start moving, possibly even disapproving of our methods and excesses.

We demand obvious, simple things, which are, for this reason, scandalous and subversive. We request that the dispositions which suppress and seize the liberty and the truth of public radio and TV information be revoked. We request that all the competitors in the elections be given the same number of minutes for propaganda and debate, and that the order of such addresses be decided by draw; (clearly, the minutes of information robbed these days from the electors will be given back entirely). Nothing else. Not privileges, but rights, equity and justice. We need to be capable of saying no to violence at its origins, or we will all die of it in any case. An old authoritarian plan is being carried out, with the active complicity of the communist Left. They want to force us to live as people resigned to disappearing as citizens and as democrats. It is the blackmail which the violent ones have always inflicted on those who wish to continue defending a civil, peaceful and human life. But surviving as subjects or sl

aves is something we are not interested in. This is why the authority eliminates us.

From all parts, the objective si this. The companions of the PSI themselves, by refusing any political agreement with us, to reduce everything to a subordinate confluence in exchange for some miserable position, are objectively pursuing the common objective of wiping us out as an autonomous force: carrot-and-stick policy in addition to direct violence.

What can we do therefore? Once again, as for twenty years, as for Ernesto Rossi (5) and Mario Pannunzio (6), for Bruno Villabruna and Leopoldo Piccardi (7), as for all the truly new and alternative forces throughout the sixties and seventies, we are in fact excluded from the democratic system. The figures are manipulated and there are nothing but cheats at the table. The length and the conditions of the presence we are granted are proportional to the objective of making the fictitious presence of the radicals into the coverage and the alibi of an antidemocratic operation aimed at ruling out every possibility for us electors to judge new proposals and new forces, of making us choose only between the parties which are part of the racket of the anti-constitutional crime. After the TV broadcasts and the breach into the public and private information of the past weeks, the violence against us has been doubled in intensity, because they sense we represent millions and millions of citizens. The establishment is afr

aid, in all its components: the government and the opposition, Left and Right. As usual, they will tell us that we are exaggerating; but if we were wrong, why would the country and the institutions be in such a predicament? And if there had ever existed a real opposition in the place of this fairy tale for dupes, would the only regime scandals have come from Washington and from the radicals? And what about the thousands of other laws, such as this one of the committee, voted in Parliament in these past twenty years by DC and PCI together, with the whole train of their subordinates? Once again, as for divorce, for abortion, for conscience objection, for the moralization of the public life, for the defence of the oppressed minorities and majorities, for the lowering of the voting age to eighteen, for drugs, to defeat violence we can do nothing but oppose other precise and conclusive objectives, which would mean growth for all, defence of the legality as it is, even if its is not ours and even if we do not li

ke it.

Our responsibility is that of having endured all this for twenty years. Patience and humbleness have been the aegis under which we have lived our political and civil life until now. Let no one ask us to continue in this direction of resignation and renouncement. We will not do this. Our nonviolent answer - the complete refusal of food and drink - will last until justice is done, and until death; this is the meaning of the formula "all-out".

This time I have to confess I'm afraid. There will be several of us: the idea that others could die before me makes me a coward. This is why I have to beg those who understand, who agree, who endorse our opinion on the the ongoing events and on what needs to be done, urging them to act immediately, autonomously, without waiting to express a tardy and inadequate "sympathy" toward us, because this is not the essence of what we are asking.

On this same newspaper, a few days before he was murdered, Pier Paolo Pasolini (8) announced the inevitability of his death. He wasn't taken seriously, because everyone sensed how desperately he loved life. And also because poets are never believed. This time too, violence advances, arrogant, self-assured, manifest; it will not hide in the dark, it will not even try to deny itself; the nonviolence we have chosen has unveiled it, enlightens it in all its corners, in its determined, obtuse, brutal pace. This way, perhaps, when the conflict will take place the weapons will be less uneven: there will perhaps be the reasonable hope of defeating it, of interrupting it. In these hours, dozens of thousands of us can unite to save our hopes, by defending the rights of everyone, including the rights of our opponents, of those who attack us. We ask everyone to send a telegram to the Radical Party in Rome, at once. To those who can do more than this, we ask all they can do. We desperately need time; but there is very li

ttle time left. This is why, to grasp the occasion which is offered to us today by this newspaper, we postpone the beginning of our hunger strike to Monday.

P.S. I have acknowledged the denials of Goffredo Parise and of the "Corriere" regarding the suspicions concerning the alleged delay in the publication of an article on me by Parise himself. I am very happy about this, and am sorry that the misunderstanding could have exposed a colleague to unjust criticism.

Translator's notes

(1) PDUP: Party of Proletarian Union.

(2) Sandro Pertini (1896-1990): Politician. Socialist, was imprisoned and exiled during fascism. In 1943-45 took part in the Resistance. President of the Chamber of Deputies ('68-76), President of the Republic (1978-85).

(3) Piero Calamandrei (1889-1956): Italian jurist and politician, author of several juridical essays and founder of the magazine "Il Ponte".

(4) Dario Fo (1926): Italian comedian and playwright.

(5) Ernesto Rossi (1897-1967): Italian journalist and politician.

Leader of Giustizia e Libertà (1929), he was arrested in 1930 for his antifascist activity. After the was he promoted the European Federalist Movement and was one of the founders of the Radical Party. His best known work is "I padroni del vapore" (1955).

(6) Mario Pannunzio (1910-1968): Editor of the newspaper "Risorgimento Liberale" (1943-47) and of the weekly "Il Mondo" (1949-66).

(7) Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975): Italian writer and film director. Author of verse, novels on the underprivileged in Rome, "Ragazzi di Vita" (1955) Una vita violenta (1959), theatre texts, essays. In his films he described the miserable life in the peripheral neighbourhoods around Rome: "Accattone" (1961), "Mamma Roma" (1962), "La ricotta" (1963). He also provided an interpretation of the Gospel with "Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964).