ABSTRACT: In the interview by Yugoslavian journalist Dragos Kalajic, Marco Pannella answers questions on Cicciolina, the United States of Europe, the right to live and the life of rights and on the transnational radical party.

(Radical News n. 1 of 9 January 1988)

One of the bizarre paradoxes of the Yugoslavian political scene is the incredible discrepancy between the percentage of professional politicians and the active population, a percentage to be considered a world record, together with their prevailing illiteracy: in most cases they are not even capable of correctly reading a speech written by another person, and even less capable of writing one themselves. The proof of this was provided some time ago by a show - which underlined the supreme European ability in the art of rhetorics - before an empty, seedy, worn, depressing and cold ball-room of the "House of the young people" of Belgrade, in the offices of the "Rhythm of the heart" organization. The show was attended, apart from the speaker, the escort and myself, by five feminist furies, two pederasts, three outsiders, an eccentric and a couple of wretches. There was not one professional politician, not even one of those who aspire to a political career, at least judging by their aspect. It's a pity, because t

hese persons could have learnt a lot of things. Marco Pannella was the speaker, one of the most provoking creators of political shows, and a world-famous one, in his quality of member of Parliament and head of the Italian Radical Party, that has decided to transform itself into a transnational and Euro-federalist party at the congress summoned for the coming 2nd of December in Bologna.

He spoke with passion, inspired, convincing, brilliant, obviously speaking on the spur of the moment, without a text, for hours...as if he were in front of a room packed with mass vibrations. He was not discouraged by the accusations addressed against him by the feminists of being a supporter of fascism, or rather, of the Polish "Solidarnosc" movement, because it would seem to be a consolidated fact that Lech Walesa is a Nazi, even worse than Goebbels. He answered back that he did not judge people according to their words, but according to their acts, and that he had never been aware of such ill-deeds committed in the past by "Solidarnosc".

A party of intellectuals and outcasts.

With equal ardour he invited those present to adhere massively to the new transnational and Euro-federalist Radical Party, stating that the Jugoslavian Constitution and legislation do not forbid the formation of other parties. Later on, in the course of the interview with the author of these lines, Pannella added that his opinion on the matter was furiously questioned by the lawyers of the Yugoslav "dissidents", but that he had received positive assurances on the part of the Prime Minister, Mikulic: "He told me that I was right, he then added that there were many historical and political reasons for which the foundation of other parties was not desirable. Note: "desirable"! In the meantime, wishes are one thing, the exercise of a right is another. I assume the principle of a right that is valid all through the world: all that is not forbidden is allowed. In the end, the Jugoslavian Prime Minister told me a very interesting thing: "you see, we are men of the old generation, when the new one come, things will

change".

In the occasion of the parliamentary and administrative elections in Italy, the Radical Party manages to poll barely 2 or 3% of votes. These votes are mainly the votes of the non-conformist intelligentsia, of the homosexuals and lesbians, who until yesterday were imprisoned, of the mafiosi convicted to serve life sentence. In this case the figures are misleading, because in the reality of the Italian political life the Radical Party is one of the decisive forces. Creating and conducting a series of civic and referendum initiatives, the Radical Party has succeeded in changing the laws and the habits in Italy deeply, making the civil society and the ecological conscience grow, starting from abortion to the right of the common citizens to be judged exactly like the politicians and the judges before the law, to the block of the proliferation of nuclear plants.

Pannella makes up for the scarcity of votes with the charm of an innate Narcissus, who attracts the flashlights of contemporary life with the indefatigable activity of a stage genius. Always and in everywhere, Pannella ensures an excellent show. I think Pannella literally enacted the suspect of the "silent majority", that is, that politics are some kind of circus: from smoking marijuana publicly to fight against prohibition on drugs, to the opening of public clinics for abortions, forbidden by the law, to the hunger strike in the context of a battle to help the starving peoples of the world, when he lots forty kilograms, to when he made a porn-star, Cicciolina, enter the Italian Parliament as a Radical deputy.

What did Cicciolina contribute to politics, apart from her breasts?

In the corner of the equally depressing night club of the Hotel Continental, at the word Cicciolina, a wave of fatigue sweeps through Pannella's forehead.

In what did she contribute? She made us lose at least 300,000 votes. Let's be clear: unlike other parties, we propose as candidates to the Parliament all the members who wish to. There are all kinds of persons: pederasts, whores, drug-addicts, murderers, terrorists, mafiosi convicted to serve life sentence...Because, you see, they join our party knowing that we struggle for the rights of all persons, those who are in prison and those who aren't. Moreover, the mafiosi respect us, because when they were free, rich and powerful, it was only the Radicals that they didn't manage to corrupt. Cicciolina was also there, in the middle of the ticket for Rome, with number 49, in alphabetical order. To say the truth, it was Scalfari, the editor of La Repubblica (1) that made her enter Parliament, with all that clamour in his editorial on Cicciolina's candidature. They accused me, saying that in this way I wanted to degrade Parliament. The result was a sought-for chaos. In any case, when we consider the number of times C

icciolina showed her breasts, her bottom and her thighs during the electoral campaign, we can say that she received too few votes, barely 20,000. What does she talk about in Parliament? But you see - allow me to use the "you" form - there has been a misunderstanding: she talks about certain sexual freedoms, but in fact Cicciolina is simply a sex merchant. For the rest, she is a kind girl, pretty, not terribly young...but not very intelligent.

For a Europe united against nationalisms

For the interview with Pannella I came to Belgrade from Rome, where in the political and cultural circles, people say that the transformation of the Radical Party into a transnational and Euro-federalist party is a necessary alternative, after the closing of the political perspectives of the party on the local scene. In other words, according to the same rumours, Craxi, the Socialist leader, eliminated Pannella and the Radicals from the coalition after an ultimatum of the Christian Democrats, who were outraged by the presence of Cicciolina on the benches of Parliament. Pannella reveals his long friendship with Craxi and the difficulty he has of talking in Craxi's absence, then he suddenly bursts out: "The fact is this; Craxi - this is his strength and his weakness- thinks both in long terms and at the present time and place. He has no medium-range strategies. After having been Prime Minister for three and a half years, he stopped, sat down and is still waiting to understand what he must do. Whereas I think t

hat we should have taken advantage of the victory obtained at the last referendums to engage in a large-scale plebiscitary action. He was frightened by our suggestion of carrying out a reform of the electoral and parliamentary system according to the British model: two large parties, the block of conservatives and the block of left-wing democrats - and forget the rest! The others would converge. I think that the system with a multitude of small and tiny parties is just as disastrous as the single party system. Because the fundamental problem today is to rule, not to represent."

"What induced us to the transformation of the party into a transnational party? The fact that we have had many victories in Italy, therefore we were keen on expanding our politics to a European dimension. Paradoxically, in the epoch of telexes, of satellite Television, of the capital and the transnational corporations, we have Internationals of the parties but not one transnational party. We have always been a party that attracted

ideological differences around concrete and common battles in order to achieve concrete goals. I think that there is the need for a thinking, political and transnational organ that begins to organize, live, think and judge on the basis of reality. The fundamental thing of our reality is that power is transnational.

In other words, we are aware of the degree to which the governments of the national states are officially influenced and even more frequently unofficially influenced, by the transnational capital. The only effective answer to such a situation is to have a strong European Parliament and a strong European government, capable of...I'm not saying eliminating the financial power, because that would be impossible,...but at least adequate to manage the economy and to control it".

"Note: only seventeen months separate us from June 1986, when the deputies for the European Parliament and the Prime Minister of the Parliament will be elected in the twelve European countries. In practise, this means that the Federation of the European States or the United States of Europe are about to be created in an unquestionable way, even if, for the moment, the power of the Prime Minister of this European government shall be rather "Platonic". The European federation is therefore already being formed, and this requires the urgent organization of an action on the part of all those that agree on this point".

I try to see the perspectives of a unification of Europe optimistically, from a Jugoslavian point of view, but the shadows of the nationalisms dim my eyesight. At the night club's table, like a conjurer, Pannella easily solves the problem of nationalisms with the formula of a "unity of ideas", known as "politique d'abord" in the French political culture and tradition ("policy of regrouping"). "We believe that the unity between the Basque country and Madrid, Ireland and London, Alto Adige and Rome, Kossovo and Belgrade...are possible above all in the realm of ideas. Ideas unite, and destroy the temptations of nationalisms and regionalisms. Where would national States in the sense of a right of the etṇs and not of the ethos take us? Toward an increased atomisation, perhaps even toward wars, fratricide massacres. We are the witnesses of the millenial tragedy of European wealth. The most important European experience of this century is the acknowledgement of the enormous importance and value of tolerance, of th

e political organization of tolerance. We have understood that nationalisms have caused the greatest tragedies in our century. The moment has come to give shape and power to the European States, on a common basis, on the basis of the acknowledgement of fundamental human rights and on the unity of ideas and not of blood.

For the right to life and the life of law.

He defines the Radicals and himself as the "extremists of the law". "We fight to make the referendum into the fundamental form of political expression, because it is an extraordinary mechanism of the law and the state based on laws. Our motto is: for the right to life and for the life of law, that is, for the life of law and the right to life. Unlike the traditional anarchic currents, who saw in the law, as Rousseau did, an element of corruption of society's condition of purity and innocence, we do not believe in a "good savage", but on a State based on laws. Already in 1968, unlike them, we said that the law of the jungle was the worst law, that even the law of revenge was better, because it is a law and can therefore be changed. We are extremists of the Western thought: Montesquieu, the separation of powers, a state based on law and not on ethics. We have 'legalized' Italy.

In 1968 the Radicals attempted to legalize the States of the Warsaw Pact, demonstrating in their capitals for peace and against the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. Pannella was at the head of the demonstrations in Sofia.

"Ah, Sofia! We distributed 3,500 leaflets there. We had realized that in the public toilets they put pieces of newspaper instead of toilet paper, and we had replaced them with our leaflets. We put about forty leaflets in each toilet. Then we walked into the main square, right in front of the public security headquarters, with our large banners, appeals for peace, fraternity and freedom for Czechoslovakia. A large groups of person encircled us, to whom we distributed our leaflets. There were also traffic policemen and soldiers, who thought it was an official demonstration of their party and therefore helped us, regulating the traffic. About a quarter of an hour later 4 large cars arrived, out of which four giants with moustaches and leather coats came out, like in the movies! They put us inside the cars and put took us to prison. In all my life I have never seen such an appalling place as that prison. They questioned us under the command of a general until dawn. At the same time, there was a chaos on the Sofi

a-rome diplomatic line! They couldn't understand how we managed to distribute 3,500 leaflets. But the most comic misunderstanding came when they asked me how many members the Radical Party had. I answered six hundred, but the translator, who did not believe it, said six hundred. After that, the general, much relieved, made a scornful gesture with his hand: "Only six hundred? Bah! what kind of a party are you, when there are sixty million Italians!"...

At the end of the interview, with the sense of hospitality that is typical of Serbians, I asked Pannella if he wanted anything. He answered that his greatest wish was the adhesion of Jugoslavia to the United States of Europe, specifying: "I told the Yugoslavian politicians to fight in order for the European Parliament to ask Yugoslavia to become part of the European Federation. I talked about this already in 1985, at the Press Centre, when such an event seemed pure imagination, whereas today it is much closer to reality. You don't realize how rich with contradictions you are, fertile contradictions, which are life itself and its energy".