Emma Bonino (1) sounds a warning: the radical party needs 30,000 members. And money for a party that hasn't stolen.

ABSTRACT: Twenty-two questions for the secretary of the radical party elected by the 36th congress of the Radical Party (Rome, 4/8 February 1993 - The general motion passed by the congress has ruled that the condition to avoid the dissolution of the party is reaching 30,000 memberships in Italy by February 28th).

(PANORAMA, February 21st, 1993)

She has the same natural grace of when I first met her, in 1976, outside the Roman hotel where Marco Pannella (2) was carrying out a hunger strike. At the time she was a young woman who knew close to nothing about politics and had just joined the radical party. Now she has become secretary of the same party, the only woman-secretary of a party in Italy, albeit a small party with little more than 3,000 members and who is pleading for 30,000 in order to continue its battles.

MUGHINI - They call you "Rambo", after the 17-year guerrilla you have been carrying out. Could you imagine spending these 17 years of militancy in any other party?

BONINO - Absolutely not. The radical party is small, agile and loosely organized. It's exactly my type of thing. I would have felt misplaced in a bigger and more structured party.

MUGHINI - Are large and organized parties over and done with?

BONINO - They have committed suicide, with incredible stubbornness.

MUGHINI - How much does the Radical Party cost?

BONINO - Ten billion a year. Two and a half billion for the structure, i.e. renting the offices, telephone bills, salaries for some 30 people who work there. The remaining 7 billion and a half are used for our political initiatives.

MUGHINI - How much should a party larger and better organized than the radical party cost?

BONINO - It should cost very little as far as its structure is concerned. If the political initiatives have an aim and an objective, then there's no limit to the expenses. If peace is to be achieved in Bosnia, then I'm willing to take money from Rockefeller or even the mafia.

MUGHINI - If a street vendor who wants to place a stand in a certain square of Rome offered you a million, would you take pains to have him obtain a license?

BONINO - In all these years it has never happened. Obviously people perceive we are different and just wouldn't suggest anything of the kind.

MUGHINI - Is the Radical Party you are secretary of more at ease at the opposition or as part of a possible government?

BONINO - Some 150 MPs who are members of the Radical Party sit in Parliament. Some of them are part of the cabinet, others are at the opposition, others still want preschedule elections.

MUGHINI - Better a government like the one guided by the socialist Giuliano Amato or a new one to be the result of a larger coalition, but with the danger of a wild bunch?

BONINO - The rules of western democracy should be respected, especially at difficult historical moments. The rules of western democracy say that there is a majority and an opposition. The worst historical moment in the recent political history of this country has been that of the so-called governments of national unity. They passed the law on state-controlled rents to benefit workers, and as a result workers were almost forced to live in slums, since no one wanted to rent flats at those conditions.

MUGHINI - Better to go on arresting ten politicians a day or pass a law that protects the convicted and dismisses them from political activity, as the judges of Operation "Clean Hands" have been advocating?

BONINO - The important thing is devising new rules on the functioning of politics and on the transparency of its costs. At that point, without forgetting the past, it would be possible to pass a law that mitigates penal intervention on convicted politicians.

MUGHINI - If it were proven that the radical member Claudio Martelli pocketed money by way of kickbacks, would his rights as a radical member be diminished?

BONINO - Positively not. The radical party has no intention whatsoever of replacing the judiciary.

MUGHINI - Can someone like Mario Chiesa (3) join the radical party?

BONINO - Of course.

MUGHINI - But what if during an assembly Chiesa gets up and preaches maximum morality in politics?

BONINO - That would be his contradiction, not ours.

MUGHINI - As a woman in politics, have you ever agreed with the proposal of assigning a share of the positions in the parties to women?

BONINO - Never. The fact that women have been oppressed ny men doesn't imply women are better than men. There are great women and there are horrible women. Also, we are the majority of the population, so we shouldn't undervalue ourselves, as I said to Livia Del Turco of the PDS. If we really have to talk about shares, then we should be given no less than 60 percent.

MUGHINI - How many times have you dreamt of killing Pannella from 1975 to date?

BONINO - Not even once. Nonetheless, Pannella is a complicated person. He has succeeded in making me cry a lot of times. The last one was when I was elected secretary of the Radical Party, an election I had tried to avoid to the very last.

MUGHINI - Draw me a brief outline of three prophetic militants of the Radical Party, Toni Negri (4), Enzo Tortora (5) and Cicciolina (6).

BONINO - Instinctively, Negri was someone I couldn't feel anything in common with. I couldn't understand him when he talked. I tried reading him and the result was even worse. I can't say he has been a bad teacher, because I really didn't understand him. But one thing I was sure of, that was that he was arrogant and somewhat cowardly. Tortora joined the Radical Party after Negri, and many feared he too would have escaped. Tortora instead gave his best at the most difficult moment of his life. As to Cicciolina, I never could understand what was behind her mask. I always wondered whether she was always like that, even in her private life. I couldn't understand what was going on in her mind.

MUGHINI - Is your somewhat hard external surface a mask you wear?

BONINO - It's a mask that easily comes undone, because I often cry and shout. But down inside I'm a tough person, really. I mean, I can cope with situations.

MUGHINI - Some make fun of the so-called new faces of Italian politics, Umberto Bossi (7), Leoluca Orlando (8), Mario Segni (9). And you?

BONINO - I really don't think of Orlando as a new face: until two years ago he was the mayor of Palermo. Bossi is, as the leader of a political formation which I do not demonize but which I fight against. As to Segni, I can't understand his objectives.

MUGHINI - What's important in your life apart from politics?

BONINO - My mother, my brother and his family, my sister and her family.

MUGHINI - How many important love affairs have there been in your life?

BONINO - Four.

MUGHINI - Not one of them managed to divert you from politics?

BONINO - Some ended for this very reason.

MUGHINI - Imagine you were traveling by train from Rome to Florence with Marco Pannella. Would you discuss politics or the latest film you saw?

BONINO - With Marco you just can't avoid talking politics.

MUGHINI - If you gave up politics, what would you like to do?

I'd like to travel the world on a sail-boat.

MUGHINI - Who with?

BONINO - Roberto Cicciomessere (10). In 1985 I had contracted an amoeba and had lost a lot of weight. Marco told me to take a break. I spent three months on a sail-boat with Roberto. After those three months I was dying to come home.

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Radical messengers available

What if, exactly one year after the kickback scandal broke out, and as the system seems to be coming apart, the Radical Party were to close? The Italian political paradox would reach its acme. That is why Panorama is underlining and pointing out to its readers the civil importance of the battle waged by Marco Pannella's small party: covering the expenses with the contributions of the members, who should total 30,000 by February 28th. A desperate attempt, it seems, since adhesions to date are only 3,000.

If you want to join the party you can do so from any post office by sending a postal order payable to the Radical Party, via di Torre Argentina 76, 100186 Rome. The minimum fee for Italian citizens is Lit. 270.000. The suggested fee is Lit.365.000, i.e. 1.000 lire per day. Higher contributions are obviously welcome.

The radical party is doing all it can to encourage prospective members. If you cannot reach a post office, an "emergency" membership service is in function in most Italian cities: a radical "messenger" will collect the sum at your home.

The radical Party's telephone number in Rome is 06/689791.

Translator's notes

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) 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.

(3) CHIESA MARIO. One of the first to be investigated by the magistrates of Operation "Clean Hands". Disclosures made by Chiesa led to the conviction of many prominent politicians.

(4) NEGRI TONI. (Padua 1933). Italian writer and philosopher, exponent of the laborite and revolutionary extreme Left, was convicted as the architect 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 member of Parliament in 1983. He escaped his trial by fleeing clandestinely to France, where he currently lives.

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

(6) STALLER ILONA (Elena Anna). (Budapest 1951). Best known as Cicciolina, porn actress, elected member of Parliament in 1987 on the radical party ticket.

(7) UMBERTO BOSSI. Leader of Italy's Northern League.

(8) LEOLUCA ORLANDO. Former member of the DC, he then left this party to form a movement of his own, La Rete ("The Network"). Elected mayor of Palermo at the December 5 elections.

(9) MARIO SEGNI. Previously member of the DC, has formed a movement of his own called "Patto per l'Italia".

(10) CICCIOMESSERE ROBERTO. (Bolzano 1948). Radical deputy belonging to the European Federalist Group. A conscientious objector, he was arrested and convicted; following his initiative, in 1972 this civil right was recognized in Italy. In 1970 he was treasurer of the Radical party, which he was also secretary of in 1971 and 1984. In 1969 he was secretary of the LID (Italian League for Divorce) and member of the European Parliament from 1984 to 1989. The mastermind and organizer of "AGORA' telematica", multilingual computer communications system.