By Marco Pannella

ABSTRACT: The convicts Giuseppe Piromalli and Vincenzo Andraus, serving life terms for numerous ferocious killings, have joined the Radical Party. There is scandal in the press. For the righteous thinkers of the regime murderers must remain such and not recognise the power of non-violence nor express respect and solidarity with the party of constitutional law and non-violence.

(CORRIERE DELLA SERA, September 4, 1986)

Perhaps my comrades thought they would be able to announce that to guarantee the continuity of the "good sense" of the Radical Party for Italian democracy (all in the future or the far past), a great part of the country's intellectual elite had taken membership cards. Would that it were. Meanwhile, however, membership has been taken by the "godfather" Giuseppe Piromalli and the multiple murderer Vincenzo Andraus who thus become - and I am certainly very pleased about it - my and our comrades in struggle, at least for the sixty days still to go before the "new Radical year" if there should be one.

Let us admit that the fact makes news: two life-term convicts with half a dozen murders each to their credit are among the very first to come running to "give substance, voice and a helping hand" to the party of non-violence, the constitutional state, and political democracy, are among the very first to come rushing to save this party.

I feel no need of wondering why they did it since we asked all Italian citizens to do it, and so we also asked them. If anything, my problem, our problem, is to understand why others have not done so up to now!

However, I can imagine that the "godfather" Piromalli, head of a family that has wielded a lot of power in its native territory, sharing it with the political class, and finding himself now at over sixty locked up in prison, probably forever; and knowing better than most people the seriousness, the honesty, the rigorousness of the Radical Party and the capability and efficacy of their non-violence; and he himself also now having more need of justice and just men than ever - I can see how he is glad to do what he can to lend a helping hand to those who ask for it. I can also imagine how Vincenzo Andraus, like others who are "politically" and not merely "commonly" violent, would want to give homage and show friendship and respect to those who through all the passing years have shown how non-violence pays off, how strong it is, how beautiful and practicable, and how respect for law, for the rules are worth believing in and practising - if it were really only possible...

However, we might have every right to hope, until the contrary is proved, that the gesture of Piromalli and Andraus might be taken as an example, an example to be followed by "respectable" people, by the Pharisees and the publicans.

Instead - good heavens! - once again we have a scandal. But what fault is it of ours if the "Open Line" programme of "Radio Italia" receives tens of thousands of calls for the lynching of Enzo Tortora (1), Giovanni Negri (2) and Marco Pannella, make mince meat of us and want to send us up in the smoke of a holocaust, while "Radio Penitentiary", by way in this case of Piromalli and Andraus, calls for the life and growth of the Radical Party with its battle for "the right to life and a life under law"?

And what are you expecting - aside from the Christian story of redemption and the lay one of judging according to works - from the "criminals" who are in prison? That they should confirm for your peace of mind that they are wild beasts and you are human beings?

For years and years you have condemned the Radical Party to death or allowed it to be killed. It is understandable that now you find the danger intolerable that the "perverse", the "thieves", the "worst of you" should be the ones to think of and to try giving life to the 1987 Radical Party instead of joining in the weeping and following the corpse to the graveyard of the country's so uncivil civil history.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Enzo Tortora - A popular television MC who was tried and eventually acquitted of charges of Mafia activities.

2) Giovanni Negri - A prominent Radical Party leader.