"IT IS NECESSARY TO RISK TRYING THE NEW, TO RISK ONE'S LIFE"

VJESNIK - PANORAMA SUBOTOM - ZAGREB - OCTOBER 1, 1988

ABSTRACT: Marco Pannella's replies to an interview published by the Croatian daily Vjesnik. The right of Yugoslavia to be a member in full standing of the European Community; the PR's choice of Zagreb as the site of its congress does not conflict with the letter of the Yugoslavian constitution; the need of rising above the level of the national state.

(RADIKALE NOVOSTI edited by MARINO BUSCHADIN and SANDRO OTTONI with the collaboration of MASSIMO LENZI, FULVIO ROGANTIN, PAOLA SAIN JAN VANEK, ANDREA TAMBURI - TRIESTE, JANUARY 1, 1989)

REPLIES

1) For what reason - several years ago - in the midst of the Trieste City Council, with the danger of a mounting anti-Yugoslavian nationalism, did I begin my speech with the cry: "I am a Slovene"? For what reason, more than thirty five years ago, when the Yugoslavian Students Union was expelled from the Prague U.I.E. [International Students Union, ed.] did I together with Olaf Palme and a few others have to invite them to participate as full members in the co-ordinating organisation of our country's national students unions, as Chica Drulovic well remembers? Why ever did I continually request during the last election campaign in Venetia Julia and Friuli at Trieste that our townships, our provinces, our regions should co-operate strictly in projects and mutual Italo-Yugoslav organisations and called for the "great return" of all Dalmatians and Istrians in Italian-speaking provinces of the "Republic of Yugoslavia" in the brotherhood and unity of a European Community of a federal and federative type? Why as

a member of the parliamentary delegation, before the highest authorities of the "Republic of Yugoslavia" in Belgrade, and scandalizing my colleagues at first, did I always bring up the question of the Yugoslavian Republic's right to become a member in full standing of the United States of Europe founded on the nonalignment with the cold war schemes of criminally expensive and dangerous armaments of a system of "national states" whose dimensions compelled them to the fatal choice of belonging either to one or the other empire or of being condemned to economic and technological bankruptcy - hence civil and social too - by their archaic dimensions, by the suffocating smallness that is unsuited to allow for a true market economy and inadequate for definitively overcoming the curse of ethnic contrapositions? Why did I for years and years with the Radical Party sustain what seemed a heresy and which today is a recognised truth - that is, that "the letter of the Yugoslavian constitution" does not oblige one to make

a single-party choice which has been affirmed in the last few decades for well-known and profound historical reasons? Why did I affirm that the Yugoslavian ruling class had given demonstrations of courage, seriousness and rigour in recent years such as our leaders have never given, and why did I emphasise, for instance, that in Lubljana this summer a great public demonstration was permitted of solidarity with journalists and citizens who had been arrested - demonstrations which had not even been authorised and were escorted in "British" style by the police rather than repressed as would have been the case in Rome, perhaps, or Paris?

Why ever, now that the Radical Party is "trans-national and trans-party", should we have not chosen the hospitality and organisational ability of the Croatian capital and the Yugoslavian Republic as the seat of our congress? The debate going on in Europe, in Italy, in Yugoslavia and in the world, the democratic reform of the world, of the Italian party-power system or the one-party regimes elsewhere, the overcoming of national states, the product of wars and treaties among ruling powers, imposed from above in Europe and even more in Africa (which is dying of it), the recovery of the great international ideal of the pacifist and humanitarian Socialism of the beginning of the century, political and parliamentary democracy as a necessary condition for economic and social democracy, the concrete projects to be sustained for the organisation of brotherhood among peoples and persons, in justice, in freedom, in nonviolence, for the life of law and the right to life - all of this must also be the patrimony of

Croatia, of Yugoslavia, of Europe. I could go on at length, but I want to say to Zagreb, "I am also a Croat", and I want to hear my Yugoslavian brothers and sisters, my comrades say: "we are also Italian, European, Radicals"...

2) I do not know who says so. But within a year all the parties that count have ended up supporting our referendums on justice and nuclear power, which they had before tried to block. And on all sides, beginning with the PCI [Italian Communist Party] with whom for twenty years we have have been in fierce contraposition, today we hear expressions of esteem and also of probable friendship. We are weak, on the national level, in the things we refuse to occupy and to desire...

3) We are not the party of a "capitalist country", we are not a "national" party. We are a party that is Gandhian, radically nonviolent, extremely combative, which daily puts its life on the line to bind it to the adherence and the contribution of people and of the militants for justice and freedom, which has the need to live and to bring to life everywhere "intransigent" ideals and policies, and democratic and civil "tolerance". As in Italy today one can no longer be "only" a Radical. One can be a Radical "as well", aside from one's "national" choices. The rights of individuals, the certainty of one's rights, the freedom to express one's own opinions and to organise to defend and propagate them while respecting the law, the assuming of concrete responsibility for the struggle to affirm these principles everywhere, the environment, nonviolence, a lawful society, the right to be different and of diversity - all of this poses problems everywhere which everywhere can be resolved: in Palermo, Madrid, Ajaccio o

r Zagreb.

4) I am absolutely certain that if the embassies know bow to do their professional duties, if the press helps, if the reality of the Radical Party can be correctly evaluated in Belgrade and Zagreb and not in terms of obtuse cold war interpretations, our congress will be given a fraternal greeting and prestigious encouragement even by "official Yugoslavia". Otherwise as pacifists, up to January 3, with extreme, nonviolent, Gandhian faith in the form of truth and dialogue, we will work in that direction, everywhere, in the streets, the newspapers, on the radio, in parliaments beginning with the European Parliament as well as the Italian and Yugoslavian ones. At our congress in Zagreb there will be many deputies from the European (and Italian) Parliament of every "national" party. The just interests, economic and productive, of Yugoslavia will needs be strengthened and enlightened by this...

To finish, I don't believe that the Radical Party congress will have anything to say about the evolution of Yugoslavia in one ideological direction or another. As for all the countries of the world, we will be able to underline a series of practical points, of human, civil, and juridical objectives to be pursued everywhere, and so also in Yugoslavia, for freedom, law, security, social and civil development in Europe and the world.

5) We propose it for the same reasons for which we support it for Italy, for France, for the other countries which are already members: because the dimension of the national state is no longer a liveable condition. Because we have the same problems. Because our states are the consequences of centuries-old historical set-ups or of the tragic world wars of the Twentieth Century. Because the problems of Kossovo. of the Basque countries, Northern Ireland, the South Tyrol, the ethnic conflicts in Belgium cannot be resolved on the national level but on that of the Unites States of Europe. Because the problems of the Serbian and Montenegran minorities in Kossovo are otherwise insoluble as are those of the Italian minority in the South Tyrol or of the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Naturally either the United States of Europe will be created or the "single European market" will also fail. In Belgrade, London, or Bonn, they sometimes delude themselves into thinking that a true market economy can be realised without the guidance

of a "democratic" power and without great institutional reforms.

The North-South problems in "our countries" are in danger of worsening rather than being resolved. And there is the risk that racist reflexes will occur against the poor areas of our nations.

6) Dear friend, it is the "status quo" which can no longer be defended, whose only future is one of catastrophe. So we must run the risk of something new, risk our lives, if we do not want to risk death. They are Utopians who continue to not learn the lessons of history, to defend old ideas and balances which are bankrupt - not we who pragmatically propose concrete and reasonable choices.

That these then correspond to the values and hopes of human and social liberation with which early Socialism was born and affirmed, or - two centuries ago -brought on the great French Revolution, all the better. Don't you think so? By the way, why don't you "also" join the Radical Party? Are you aware that they may have to close up shop if you don't?