ABSTRACT: The challenge is making possible those reasonable things each of us would like to do or would like to be done to stop war, to affirm justice, to defeat violence in the world. But no one can succeed alone. Likewise, the Italian government or the American one or the Russian one cannot succeed without the support of citizens and parliaments in all parts of the world.

(NOI, February 25th, 1993)

During the radical congress, fourteen Italian christian democratic MPs announced that they would join the radical party. 170 more MPs, from the PDS, Psi, Pri, Pli, Rifondazione Comunista and Pdsi followed their example. Attending the congress were the majority of the 305 non-Italian MPs who are members of the Radical Party, coming from 17 different countries, exponents of 71 parties or political groups. A unique, unprecedented fact. But where are Bossi and Occhetto?, the journalists kept asking.Eight hundred radical congresspeople from Russia, Africa, Europe and the Americas were discussing on ways to stop the war in Bosnia or Nagorno-Karabakh, of the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty by the year 2000, of the international war crimes tribunal. There were ministers, parliamentarians, ambassadors. But the press still couldn't perceive the extraordinary nature of the fact. They finally found an argument that readers would supposedly be interested in: "Bossi and Occhetto didn't show up, they will n

ot come to the Ergife".

Time seems to teach nothing. Few have been touched by the doubt that, this time too, the radicals could be right, that they might have found the core of our societies' crisis, of what is unsettling the public opinion of all countries: science has done wonders in all fields, but politics seems instead to be powerless. On th eve of year 2000, it is incapable of confronting even the modest problem of feeding a population or preventing the rape of hundreds of Bosnian women, let alone more limited national problems.

No one has realized that the "Italian" party of the "founding" radicals has been replaced by another political subject which does not claim to be a "cross-party" but simply announces a new way of being a party, capable of addressing the questions that are upsetting the world and Europe, a party which is not the result of an ideological schism, but is supported solely by the best of what the different political families--socialist, Catholic, liberal--have contributed to Western democracy.

Will the journalists be in time to discover this mew party before

they will have to "regretfully" celebrate its death?

"I have never joined a party in my life" is what most people proudly tell us. Good on them! In this way they have given the means which the Constitution charges with contributing to determine national policy to the countless politicoes the judiciary news are filled with. I am talking to those who "have never joined", who in the past gave little attention to the pressing appeals of the Radical Party to join, to pay the sum for democracy. But it took the kickback scandal to discover how the other parties were financing themselves. Wasn't it enough to ask wonder how they could pay for billionaire electoral campaign without ever asking citizens for a cent?

At last everyone will understand why no radical has ever been implicated in a scandal. Politics is expensive: either it is financed willfully by citizens or with kickbacks. We have always chosen the first solution.

Today the Radical Party is on the verge of dying for the very fact that many "have never joined" the party which has made poverty and honesty into its standard. There is time until February 28th. If there are not at least 30,000 memberships by that date the party will close. And now, please make a note of the address where you can send a postal order with the membership fee (Lit. 1,000 per day, or a coffee less a day): Partito radicale, via Torre Argentina 76, 00186 Roma. If you prefer you can pay with your credit card, by calling the following number: 06/689791.

But what would change in our lives if the Radical Party were to win this challenge? What would happen is those who are reading were finally to decide to give us a hand to survive? The challenge is making possible those reasonable things that each of us would like to do or to be done to stop the war, to affirm justice, to defeat violence in the world. No one can succeed alone. Nor can the single governments throughout the world. A few examples? We would all like there to be an international authority, tribunal or police, democratically endowed with powers of interference, capable of intervention any time human dignity and human rights are stifled by violence, injustice and tyranny. What does it take to transform this dream into reality?

We would all like our cities to be liveable again. We would like them to be rid of the perverse effects caused not by drugs, but by prohibition on drugs, by that insane policy that makes a traffickers of small quantities of products easily found on the international market into a powerful criminal with huge profits. We would like to be rid of that vicious circle that turns the consumer into a pusher, a criminal, a bag-snatcher. We would like laws, both national and international, to abolish prohibition and bring the problem of drug users back to the medical and social realm where it belongs.

Is this too to remain a dream?

No. It is possible, if you want it to. What it takes is a transnational transparty. What it takes is your desire to build it.