ABSTRACT: On the eve of the vote on the referendums called by the radical Party (abrogation of public financing to parties and abrogation of the Reale law), Marco Pannella outlines the reasons for this initiative: "a party lives and grows to the extent in which the political and financial consent of its members lives and grows. If, with public financing, the leadership finds it can live all the same, it no longer needs consent and can even exist against it".

(O.P., 6 June 1978)

Talking with Pannella, the constant impression is that he is a completely different person from the one depicted in newspaper articles. One doubts the journalists ever even saw him, talked to him or listened to his words carefully. No vehemence, no verbal fireworks, no invectives. Perhaps the Pannella of today has changed. He uses subdued tones, refuses disruptive solicitations, he expresses more than mild judgements on the Radicals' opponents. It is as if the vehement politician of the past, the sponsor of every cause refused by others, had undergone a global metamorphosis: from tribune of peculiar groups to spokesman of a minority which is vaster than it seems; from provoker of unlimited phantasies to realistic manager of future facts. From politician to Statesman, whose moral power corresponds increasingly to an effective power.

Q: Ten days before the referendum, how does the Radical Party sound people's intentions? How will people vote on the law for the public financing of parties?

A: Two years ago, the Demoscopea conducted a poll according to which 91% of those surveyed was against it. Today it is not clear what people's position is. Sometimes I even doubt they have understood it is the same law. The information blackout imposed by the political forces to our detriment does not allow us to sound their intentions. The only thing we feel is this robbery of the truth.

Q: People have probably understood this, and could have unexpected reactions on voting on 11 June.

A: We are making all efforts in this sense, otherwise why would we struggle at all? To defeat this antidemocratic method and to win on each point. The RAI has refused even to hold a debate, or a press conference. There would still be enough time to hold two debates on public financing, and the referendum would be won.

Q: How do newspapers treat you?

A: Not one newspaper shows an attitude of impartiality and respect, not to mention friendship. Even less one in which we can have a free and open tribune. "La Repubblica", which is considered socialist and radical, is the newspaper that lynches us most often.

Q: What is the radical judgment on the behaviour of the major political forces?

A: To define them all in the same way you need a minimum of violence, which could be justified considering the way in which they all behave. They tend to prevent certain things from being known: for example, that the money refused by one party is redistributed among the other parties, and does not remain in the treasury of the State. In order to subtract the money from this distribution, we have taken it but refuse to use it. The communists are full of anger for this, and now they say one has the right of being against public funding only if one refuses it.

Q: Why are the radicals against public financing?

A: Because we follow the democratic principle. Democracy means equality of the points of departure, not of arrival. The financing given to the parties on the basis of their size instead of their stature, that is, only in proportion to the votes and seats it has, creates a further discrimination. It is the same principle which gives Pajetta (1) an hour on TV and Pannella only ten minutes. It rewards the big parties and penalized the small ones. By leaving the money untouched, we mean to refuse to accept a further penalization. Our intransigence in refusing has forced us to suspend the party's activity for months. We have accumulated debts for 400/500 million, exactly the amount the radical supporters have raised to pay for the tables, the cards and the clerks during the collection of the signatures for the referendums. We have paid on our own for a service rendered to all citizens. But ours is the investment of people who believe that politics have long time requirements. Censorship and disinformation may kil

l us day after day, but in the end time will show.

Q: Why are the communists mad at you?

A: Until 1974, the Communist Party fiercely opposed this type of financing. If it were a political force interested in leaving a mark in society it should be against it even today. Obviously it isn't, and lets the State leave marks in the society in its place.

Q.: Is it fair for nonpartisan citizens to be forced to finance parties?

A: It is unfair and dangerous. In Germany, the State draws the contributive fees from practising and volunteer members of the Churches and then passes them to the churches. In other words, it acts as a collector. In Italy, the State should do the same for the parties, but only with members or sympathizers who accept to contribute spontaneously. The danger of public financing is extremely serious, because it makes the party independent also from those who militate and pay their membership fee. A party lives and grows to the extent in which the political and financial consent of its members lives and grows. If, with public financing, the leadership finds it can live all the same, it no longer needs the consent, and can exist even against it. The Communist Party wants to reach the point of living against the consent of the communists.

Q: There are other parties apart from the communist one.

A: These are times of murder. We started off with nine referendums and we arrived with two. The other seven have become the loot of the regime and of its violence of all kinds and nature. In order to eliminate four of them, the Constitutional Court self-proclaimed itself a "Constituent Assembly" and remodeled the Constitution instead of interpreting in and upholding it. The press and the RAI presented the radical referendums as lacerations and unconstitutional operations. But the referendum committees, while being powers of the State, have never had the right to a reply or a juridical rectification. I am accused of being emphatic, but if one robs 50 million in a bank, those 50 million are called loot. The party has robbed the population of seven referendums. But even so, we can in fact say that the only legislators are us, four radicals members of Parliament, because we have forced Parliament to pass laws, albeit bad ones, which are true mines against the State: the laws on the committee of inquiry, on abort

ion and on mental institutes. Over the last months, the parties have done nothing but obstructionism. Therefore, the true legislators are the four "obstructionist" radicals who used obstructionism against the obstructionism of Parliament, which was deprived of power to destroy not the Red Brigades but the chief enemy, that is, the people, the referendums and us. Thus, we forced Parliament to pass three laws. And it would have voted a fourth one, the Reale-bis, but at this point it got the message.

Q: What message?

A: From now on, in the Italian Parliament, provided one of us four will be there, no majority, not even a 98% majority, will dare do as it please. It won't even try to. The things that happened are a pedagogic lesson. They had come massively, because someone had picked up the phone and ordered to pass so many laws in so many days. We answered that there are no rights of the majority or of the minority, but only the rights of the parliamentarian who represents Parliament. And we said we disagreed with this offence against Parliament which no one, by picking up a phone, should treat as a "hooker". We made it clear that until there is a single radical parliamentarian, they will never again be able to do this in Parliament.

Q: The MSI gave you a helping hand at this.

A: For their own reasons, which were opposed to ours. Since Berlinguer (2) and the Communists have decided to defend the fascist laws, the fascist space is overcrowded, and an opportunist like Almirante (3) cannot but create himself another space, finding it in the antifascist void created by the Communist Party.

Q: There has been a vote of confidence.

A: Governments traditionally ask for confidence when they fear the creation of a contrary majority which could place it in minority if the vote occurred by secret ballot. The Andreotti (4) government has asked for confidence against four radical parliamentarians who are far from being a majority. Obviously, it feared another majority, the one that might have emerged from the secret ballot.

Q: The communists made a poster picturing Pannella and Almirante as they gag Parliament.

A: Like violence, arrogance too is typical of those who are afraid. The communist leadership is afraid because it has discovered that in these twenty years, the radicals have remained the only unitarian force of the Left. All our battles have been successful battles of aggregation of the Left. They know that the majority of people of the Left consider us comrades; 90% of the communists know that we enact the hopes and their way of living far more than their leadership does. We have proven that in addition to being in good faith, we are also capable. We never promised miracles, but we have always acted in accordance with our possibilities. This is why the Communist Party's leadership is afraid of the small radical nucleus.

Q: How do you view the outcome of the referendum?

A. In a certain sense, we have already won, by forcing 90% of the political class which was hostile to the referendum to reach this deadline. In any case, we will not consider ourselves defeated, because we deny the democratic nature of this trial. Whatever the results, the whole thing is falsified. If I sit at a table with a cheat, and I know he's a cheat and I lose, I become his accomplice and conniving in any case. If we fail to obtain a change in radio and TV spaces, we will question the democratic character of the referendums and of the results.

Q: Many will vote "yes" out of spite against the other parties.

A: Those who vote against the financing of parties don't need the added value of saying 'no' to the parties. A useless law is always harmful, because it is as if it drugged people, giving them the impression of having a means whereas they have none. Clearly, one can vote against it out of despair or nausea, but it makes no sense to do so when there is an alternative to choose, and it is subtracted to the conscience of those who should choose it. If the political forces didn't fear that the radical message, know by the people, could create a mess, there wouldn't be this fierce censorship on the radical information. This is why they have looted and destroyed everything. If they thought the radicals were not in unison with the population, they would let us talk freely.

Q: What is your message to the people who will vote?

A: My message is the following: killing the confidence and the hope in democracy in the people and in the young is more criminal than killing Moro (5), because it means killing the hope in the future of entire generations.

Q: Which political forces are you referring to?

A: All of them: they believe there is a truth for the candidates and a truth for the people; they invent themselves the task of protecting the people from the demon of falsehood, that is, from the demon of truth which can blind it or mislead it. For reasons of State, Church or party, they mix truth and falsehood for the "good savages" which we are, to prevent us from being seduced by the truth, touched by the evidence and attracted by excessive hopes, that is, by the wish to find more happiness in this world.

Q: To what extent does the Radical Party continue to identify itself with the Left?

A: The only difference between us and the communist leadership is that we believe in the cultural traditions of the socialist, humanistic, lay and anti-jacobin Left more and more, whereas they believe in it less and less. We belong to that socialist, liberal and also communist-utopian group that knows an egg cannot take power but can be taken by power. We believe when a man learns how to say 'yes' he becomes not a man, but ceases to be one, and becomes something else.

Translator's notes

(1) Giancarlo Pajetta (1911-1990): Italian politician, pre-eminent leader of the Italian Communist Party, he was one of the main leaders of the Resistance.

(2) Enrico Berlinguer (1922-1984): Italian politician. Secretary of the Communist Youth federation (1949-56), member of Parliament as of 1968, secretary general of the Communist Party from 1972 to 1984.

(3) Giorgio Almirante (1914-1988): Secretary of the MSI from 1969 to 1987.

(4) Giulio Andreotti (1919): Italian politician. Christian Democrat, minister of the Interior (1954), of Finance (1955-58), of Treasury (1958-59), of Defence (1959-66; 1974), of Industry (1966-68), of Budget (1974-76). Prime Minister from 1972 to 1973 and from 1976 to 1979. Currently Prime Minister.

(5) Aldo Moro (1916-1978): Italian politician. Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party (1959-65), minister on several occasions, Prime Minister ('63-68), he was the mastermind of the Centre-Left policy. Foreign Minister ('69-74), Prime Minister ('74-76), President of the DC since 1976, he favoured the participation of the Communist Party in the government. He was kidnapped by the Red Brigades on 16.3.78 and found dead on 9.5.1978.