XIV.

THE DIFFICULTIES ON THE ROAD TO REFORM OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM, INDICATED TO THE RADICALS IN THE BOLOGNA MOTION.

ABSTRACT: In the fourteenth part of his report presented at the Radical Party in Budapest, First Party Secretary Sergio Stanzani describes the difficulties encountered in Italy for realising the reform of the political system. The concrete trans-party political initiatives of the PR.

(35th Congress of the Radical Party, Budapest, April 22-26, 1989)

We, for the rest, measure the full impact of this difficulty in Italy too. In the country where we have operated for so long and with such success, we can also measure the conservative resistance within the institutions to the reform of the political system.

Not only in order to be consistent with our own choice of conversion to trans-nationalism, but also to encourage a plan of thorough reform of the political system and of political alignments, the Radical Party decided at its last Congress to refrain in the future from running in elections in Italy too.

The motion of the Bologna Congress entrusted to individual Radicals the "responsibility of employing their greatest efforts to promote new political reformers and political and electoral groupings capable of becoming an alternative lay force that could direct the democratic transformation of the institutions".

I believe that many comrades, helped in this as far as possible by the party - to whom, furthermore, the motion only entrusted with being a point of reference and a meeting point - have behaved with consistency in this direction.

I could indicate the many, coherent actions which have marked the party's gradual leave-taking as such from Italy's national institutions and politics: the changing of the name of the parliamentary groups which call themselves federalist; the many parliamentary initiatives that cut across party lines; the civic, lay and ecological lists we have established with Pannella in Catania - after having attempted futilely to involve lay and ecological forces - open to energies and personalities from the most various political sources, and which has had a great success; the convergences of ecological and lay, civic and green forces which have been accomplished in Friuli Venetia Julia and in the Trentino South Tyrol; the initiative and proposal of Pannella for a federation of lay forces with the PLI and PRI [Liberal and Republican parties respectively, ed.]; the enrolment of Giovanni Negri (1) and Lorenzo Strik Lievers in the PSDI [Social Democratic Party, ed.] and their assumption of responsibilities in that par

ty; the initiative for a vast, unified aggregation of ecological and green forces in our country and the presentation of a "rainbow" [i.e. coming from various political groups, ed.] list of candidates for the up-coming European elections which several of our comrades have promoted along with many other comrades of differing political and environmental backgrounds. To this I would add the dialogue - to my mind useful - with the PCI [Communist Party, ed.] of the "new direction".

A perverse mechanism of the Italian political and electoral system, however, impels towards splintering rather than aggregating and unity. The new party of a realised and reformed democracy ought to be a lay party leading to the federation of heterogeneous forces; it ought to be a super party cutting across diverse interests, positions and cultures, capable of identifying with a lowest common denominator represented by a political programme consisting of a few precise goals of reform. But on the whole the self preservation instinct of the old parties and the party-power system push for dividing up even what is homogeneous, and for the sake of power to increasing ideological issues so that the less important the ideologies are, and the more important the real power interests are, the more emphasis the ideologies are given.

It is to this perverse impulse of our party-power system that I attribute the difficulties that are found on the path of creating a federation of lay forces and the obstacles placed in the path of the proposed "rainbow" list. How many times have we seen all the vices and defects of the old parties re-proposed in the name of political reform.

Certainly the brusque about-face of the PSI [Socialist Party, ed.], the overthrow of the policy of reformist unity with the Radicals and the Social Democrats, of a lay and ecologist alliance that this party had furthered from '85 -'87, has made everything more difficult.

In this party that has revived the politics of emergency measures for the fight against drugs and which has annulled the great popular result of the referendum on the civil responsibility of judges, we cannot manage to recognise the same party that had fought with us in the political battles and referendums for proper justice and which, in the end, had chosen to join us in an anti-nuclear policy, or the party that had been our ally in all the fights against emergency laws and for civil rights.

It was also because of this betrayal of the justice referendum that today a majority of the CSM [High Council of Magistrates, ed.] in all probability is getting ready to absolve the judges in the "Tortora affair" (2). It is almost a year since the death of Enzo Tortora - on May 17 there will be a manifestation for the establishment of the foundation that will bear his name - and Enzo is still awaiting justice.

These are the difficulties. But ought we perhaps to turn back? Back to where? Should we too, like all the others, turn towards our self-preservation, thus contradicting our proposals and will for reform? No. We must continue on the long road indicated in the Bologna Congress motion. There are no alternatives. There are no short-cuts. But in the meantime, many Italian comrades, who look back with regret on a glorious past of Radical battles and do not see the blossoming of the new party and the new policies, wrongly maintain that our choice has in fact been a flight - a flight from a secure and familiar terrain towards unknown seas. And if we analyse our difficulties and look reality in the face, if we also measure the possibility of failure, if only to try to succeed one more time in overcoming those difficulties and in judging those dangers, they hold us responsible for both, almost as if we were the ones to choose them.

It may be because of this attitude that in the fourth month of our membership campaign the party has 1,359 new members. And for me this is the greatest personal reason for feeling bitter.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Negri, Giovanni - (Turin 1957) Radical Party Secretary from 1985 to 1987. In 1986 with the slogan "Either you choose it or you lose it" he promoted the campaign for 10,000 new members. Since 1983 he has been an Italian deputy several times as well as deputy to the European Parliament. He has been among the most active supporters for the campaign against hunger throughout the world and promoter of the liberty for Tibet initiative. He was one of the founders of the ARCOD (Radical Association for the Democratic Constituent Assembly) and of the "Referendum Ticket", an electoral group in the 1992 elections.

2) Tortora, Enzo - (Genoa 1928 - Milan 1988) Journalist and famous television MC, arrested for drug pushing. Elected to the European Parliament in 1984 on the Radical ticket, he underwent a famous trial in which he was convicted, only to be absolved on appeal. This occasion became the symbol of the Radicals' most important campaign for the reform of justice.