ABSTRACT: The day after being elected secretary of the Radical Party, Emma Bonino (1) answered questions on the conclusion of the radical congress (Rome, 4/8 February 1993), on the periodical self-financing campaigns, on the many times when the very survival of the party seemed to be in danger, on corruption, on the judges, on the massive adhesion to the Radical party by parliamentarians from all parties.

(L'UNITA', February 10th, 1993)

11 a.m.: meeting. 12 a.m.: Interview. 3 p.m.: meeting...The typical working day hasn't changed much for Emma Bonino, secretary-elect of the radical party, except for the increased number of engagements. In addition to all other meetings, now there are those to organize the membership campaign. The objective, as we all know, was established by the congress: either 30,000 memberships by the end of the month, or the radical party will be closed.

Q: The first question is a "nasty" one and concerns the deadline you have established. What else will your think up of on 28th February to survive?

BONINO - More than being "nasty", the question reveals a stubborn misconception of the political value of our "poverty", of our recurring crises for lack of money.

Q: What do you mean?

BONINO - Simply, that if, in these years, the other political forces had also devised systems other than kickbacks to support themselves financially, Italian politics wouldn't have reached the point it has reached. And the parties, except for the radical one, would not have been involved in the kickback scandal. As always, we have no protections, and there are no tricks involved: if 30,000 memberships or the equivalent amount of resources have not reached the radical party by February 28th, the party will close.

Q: In spite of the vast media coverage, the number of memberships is still rather low. How do you explain this scarcity of adhesions?

BONINO - Obviously a few days of honest information cannot make up for twenty years of misguiding information, and especially of deformation of our image. Remember when the press and the television depicted us as supporters of the terrorists or as fascists? Remember how they lynched us for Negri (2) or Tortora (3) and Cicciolina (4)? And you of "L'Unità" must surely remember when "Fortebraccio" treated us like scandal-mongers and trouble-makers, like hunger strikers who feasted on spaghetti at night? With all this "information", how can we wonder at the low number of adhesions for a party which is so detached from mainstream culture?

Q: I apologize for insisting, but wouldn't your support to Amato possibly play a role in the low number of adhesions?

BONINO- We have always made the costliest choices, the choices we considered to be fair, without wondering whether they would also bring more money or new members. Only subsequently, when it was too late, everyone recognized their narrow-mindedness and that we were right. I hope this time people won't commit the same mistake because of our support to Amato, and that many will recognize in time that we have given a small but not indifferent contribution to keep the country from going bankrupt.

Q: How would you define yourself? Left-wing, centrist, conservative?

BONINO - At present there are only two blocs: those who want to defend the current parties and their regime by hook or by crook, and those who advocate a reform following which there would be only a few parties, as in Anglo-Saxon democracies. Only after this reform can we talk about right and left.

Q: The "transnational" party has been called the "laboratory" of a new democratic party. Do you like this definition? Do you agree on it?

BONINO - Yes. If Occhetto (5) dropped his ludicrous plan of setting up a combination of Socialist International, with the Greens and the Republicans, and recognized instead that the laboratory of the democratic party already exists and that it is the radical party, we would all be spared further delusions and defeats.

Q: A woman and a secretary. Is that an easy task in the radical party?

BONINO - It would be more difficult anywhere else. In the radical party you have the "advantage" of working at such frenzy rhythms that you can sometimes forget that you are a woman.

Q: Another "personal" question. What's it like to work in the shade of a complex personality such as Pannella (6) ?

BONINO - Marco likes people who can walk on their own feet. As soon as he gets the feeling he is becoming indispensable he just walks out and seeks other companions.

Q: "Party power" is an expression used at the congress. Are all parties really all the same? Are they really guilty to the same extent in your point of view?

BONINO - Our one-party regime has destroyed precisely those different responsibilities between majority and opposition which are the foundation of classical democracy. The vast majority of bills on spending, which have lead to bankruptcy, were voted unanimously. That is why in Italy, and in no other country, all parties have the same share of responsibility for having created that system.

Q: Pannella recently attacked the judges. Do you agree with him?

BONINO - Pannella attacked the judges not for the things they have done but for the years in which they passively witnessed the pilfering of the State, and especially the destruction of the laws and of the legality. But how many judges today, if we except for the ones in Milan, are truly committed to reinstating the legality? Would anyone challenge Pannella's request to prosecute the defendants also for criminal association?

Q: Don't you perceive the risk of joining that "cross-party" that opposes Di Pietro?

BONINO - Let me first of all say that we are honoured not to be part of that cross-party whose official organ is "La Repubblica", which hides its complicity with the past and tries to cover up its own scandals by turning into an all-our supporter of Di Pietro. But we are not willing to give in on the defense of the legality. The legality that was trampled in the Tortora case and that denies justice to so many citizens.

This is the end of the interview. Emma Bonino says goodbye and asks me for a favour: "could you please add that it is possible to join the radical party by sending a postal order to the Radical Party, via di Torre Argentina 76, 00186 Rome"?

Translator's notes

(1) BONINO EMMA. (Bra 1948). President of the Radical Party, former member of the European Parliament, as of 1976 member of the Italian Parliament. Among the promoters of the CISA (Information Centre on Sterilization and Abortion) and active militant in the campaign against clandestine abortion. She was tried and acquitted in Florence. Participated in the conduction, on a national and international scale, of the campaign on World Hunger. Among the founding members of "Food and Disarmament International", promoted the circulation of the Manifesto of Nobel Laureates.

(2) NEGRI TONI. (Padua 1933). Italian writer and philosopher, exponent of the laborite and revolutionary extreme Left, was convicted as the mastermind of the assassination of ing. Saronio. Ran on the Radical Party ticket (provided he waive his parliamentary immunity and accepted the trial), he was elected to Parliament in 1983. He escaped his trial by fleeing clandestinely to France, where he currently lives.

(3) TORTORA ENZO. (Genua 1928 - Milan 1988). Journalist and popular TV man. Was arrested with allegations of drug dealing. Elected to the European Parliament (1984) on the Radical Party ticket, he underwent a trial during which he was convicted and later acquitted at the appeal. Tortora was the occasion and the symbol of the most important radical campaign for the reform of the justice system.

(4) STALLER ILONA (Elena Anna). (Budapest 1951). Best known as Cicciolina, porn actress, elected to Parliament in 1987 on the radical party list.

(5) OCCHETTO ACHILLE. (Turin 1936). Italian politician. At first exponent of Ingrao's group, he then shifted to Berlinguer's centre. He became secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1988, succeeding Alessandro Natta. After launching the idea of a major "Constituent" of the left with all reformist forces, he then decided to change only the name of the party ("Democratic Party of the Left").

(6) PANNELLA MARCO. Pannella Giacinto, known as Marco. (Teramo 1930). Currently President of the Radical Party's Federal Council, which he is one of the founders of. At twenty national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty-two President of the UGI, the union of lay university students, at twenty-three President of the UNURI, national union of Italian university students. At twenty-four he advocates, in the context of the students' movement and of the Liberal party, the foundation of the new radical party, which arises in 1954 following the confluence of prestigious intellectuals and minor democratic political groups. He is active in the party, except for a period (1960-1963) in which he is correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he established contacts with the Algerian resistance. Back in Italy, he commits himself to the reconstruction of the radical Party, dissolved by its leadership following the advent of the centre-left. Under his indisputable leadership, the party succeeds in

promoting (and winning) relevant civil rights battles, working for the introduction of divorce, conscientious objection, important reforms of family law, etc, in Italy. He struggles for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. Arrested in Sofia in 1968 as he is demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia, which has been invaded by Stalin. He opens the party to the newly-born homosexual organizations (FUORI), promotes the formation of the first environmentalist groups. The new radical party organizes difficult campaigns, proposing several referendums (about twenty throughout the years) for the moralization of the country and of politics, against public funds to the parties, against nuclear plants, etc., but in particular for a deep renewal of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all carried out with strictly nonviolent methods according to the Gandhian model - but Pannella's Gandhi is neither a mystic nor an ideologue; rather, an intransigent and yet flexible politician - h

e has been through trials which he has for the most part won. As of 1976, year in which he first runs for Parliament, he is always elected at the Chamber of Deputies, twice at the Senate, twice at the European Parliament. Several times candidates and local councillor in Rome, Naples, Trieste, Catania, where he carried out exemplary and demonstrative campaigns and initiatives. Whenever necessary, he has resorted to the weapon of the hunger strike, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in particular during the major campaign against world hunger, for which he mobilized one hundred Nobel laureates and preeminent personalities in the fields of science and culture in order to obtain a radical change in the management of the funds allotted to developing countries. On 30 September 1981 he obtains at the European parliament the passage of a resolution in this sense, and after it several other similar laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliament. In January 1987 he runs for President of the European Parliament, obtaini

ng 61 votes. Currently, as the radical party has pledged to no longer compete with its own lists in national elections, he is striving for the creation of a "transnational" cross-party, in view of a federal development of the United States of Europe and with the objective of promoting civil rights throughout the world.

OCCHETTO ACHILLE. (Turin 1936). Italian politician. At first exponent of Ingrao's group, he then shifted to Berlinguer's centre. He became secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1988, succeeding Alessandro Natta. After launching the idea of a major "Constituent" of the left with all reformist forces, he then decided to change only the name of the party ("Democratic Party of the Left").