ABSTRACT: Apropos of Giuseppe Piromalli, condemned to life in prison, joining the Radical Party, Marco Pannella points out that "our statute is that of a public-service party. Anyone who wants to buys a ticket and goes along for a year's ride in the direction we are taking. And the direction is decided, from time to time, by the party congress". The "trip" is open to all, anyone can get on the Radical bus, even the "baddies" who often are the very ones who save the helpless.

(IL RESTO DEL CARLINO, JANUARY 10, 1987)

Dear Editor,

With his usual tact and honesty, Fausto Pezzato expresses his point of view on the Radical Party today. Allow me to add, on this occasion, a few explanations that do not seem to me entirely negligible for the information of Pezzato and your readers.

First of all, the Radical Party's goal today is no longer 10,000 members. That was the goal in 1986 which was well surpassed there now being 11,000 people who took out membership last year.

Today it is a question of adding another 5,000 card-carriers by January 31, 1987. We are lacking 2,100. The goal is thus within reach but with difficulty. However bad our slogan may sound too some ears - "Either you join us or you junk us" - it is not blackmail but a diagram of the situation which we hope will cause the majority of us, of the Italians, to reflect on civil problems of a general character, among others.

Fausto Pezzato sincerely expresses the embarrassment of ordinary militants because of members who are paying heavy prices, but just ones, to Justice. Life-term convicts, once potent bosses who are now perhaps reduced to dreaming of impossible escapes, but who more likely will be obliged to end their lives in prison within a few years or decades.

There is, for example Piromalli, with more than one life term to pay, the "head" of a "family" noted as belonging to the 'Ndrangheta [a Mafia-style criminal organisation in Calabria, ed.]. To my knowledge he is 65 years old, in bad health, and subject to prison treatment which is very rigid and sometimes - I confess - incomprehensible or intolerable.

Why then has Piromalli become a member of the PR? And why has he twice paid the 150,000 lire minimum dues? In order to finance us? In the hope of being freed? In the hope of being elected a deputy? Because we have programmes which are criminal or which support crime? Strange: "The Godfather" had success because it tried to sketch the portrait, to discover what kind of humanity could explain the charisma of the big bosses, of ferocious criminals. The complexity, the "richness" of a person, his "otherness" rather than his "perversity", the anthropological and cultural roots which are anything but foreign to the humanity of us all, alas!, appeared in some measure evident, plausible, all the more dangerous, I think, the less it was attributable to "demonic natures"...

I think rather that precisely Piromalli, not the "triumphant", free and powerful Piromalli, but the defeated and by now helpless one, wanted to be Radical "as well", non-violent "too", that he wanted to leave this indication to his grandchildren perhaps, or in any case to those who believed in him. The fact is, however it may be, that he wanted to contribute to "saving" the PR. If he still had any conquests or contracts to make, any "power" to save, he would have made contact with anyone else other than us. And I mean exactly "anyone else".

But this is not the real problem. Anyone who wants to buys a ticket and goes along for a year's ride in the direction we are taking. And the direction is decided, from time to time, by the party congress" and those among us who are officially or substantially responsible for leading the party. Certainly for this reason the "trip" is open to all, just as the caravans of the Far West, of John Ford, were. Often organised by Quakers or Puritans to go and live in the "heavenly pastures" of purity, honesty, work and peace, but also made up of "baddies" who often are the very ones who save the helpless at the cost of their own lives...

Now our statute is not a totem, we can change it, but we are convinced that on this point it does very well.

And how lovely it would be today to go for a distance, a singular, important part of a trip, hopefully even together with Pezzato - who I am certain, even in the city, and today, understands the need of a "public service", so that the use of private means will be complementary, a pleasure and not a condemnation.