Radical Party, Emma Bonino celebrates the victory

An interview with Emma Bonino, by Marco Berti

ABSTRACT: [Interview]. After midnight of March 3rd, Emma Bonino (1) grants an interview to outline the objectives which the party will now be able to realistically pursue. One of the most important aims is that of democratizing the UN Security Council and setting up a "permanent international crimes tribunal".

(IL MESSAGGERO, March 4th 1993)

Midnight passed an hour ago. The target of 30,000 new members has been achieved, and thus the radical party will live. Bottles of champagne are being popped open in the party's headquarters in Via di Torre Argentina to celebrate a hard-pursued victory. The party's eighty telephones won't stop ringing: life and memberships go on. The former minister of Justice, Claudio Martelli, is also here to celebrate the victory. He announces he will do more for the party, which has given him a desk and a telephone. But now that Martelli is no longer minister of justice, which means will he use to make the radical party become bigger? "My voice and my bare hands", he says, and adds "We made it. The lay miracle has occurred".

Marco Pannella (2) believes instead that "the trouble begins now". Why? "Well, so long pension and so long Bahamas. We have to work hard". Asked whom he would thank in particular for the success of the membership campaign, Pannella answers "fate". At any rate, for Emma Bonino, who is no longer the secretary "on the waiting list" of the radical party, the trouble really begins now.

Q: Mrs Bonino, what's the next step?

A: The second part of the congress motion says that, if the target of 30,000 new members has been reached, the secretary is inaugurated on May 15 and is required to call the federal council to elect the various organs and present an activity blueprint for 1993.

Q: Therefore two and a half months of inactivity?

A: No. The question now is understanding from now until May 15 which urgent political initiatives for Italy and which international priorities need to be discussed and approved. Also, by that date I need to have an idea of the organs.

Q: Will Martelli be part of the future staff of the radical party?

Q: I can't rule that out. The problem is understanding what he really wants to do.

Q: As far as the emergency of Italy is concerned, referendums will soon be held. Until a couple of days ago the group supporting the referendums seemed to be united. Now instead it seems to have come apart. How do you plan to address this problem?

A: Actually I never considered this group as compact. On the contrary it seemed to be loose, fake and without a clear objective. Is the objective the Anglo-Saxon majority system or a double ballot system on the model of Brazil or Venezuela? There has never been any clarity on the issue, except for us who have consistently advocated the Anglo-Saxon system. It's something we suggest not only for our country, but we have tried advancing it for all post-communist countries. In those countries the proportional system has normally guarantied permanence in power for the communists.

Q: The Radical Party is a multifarious party. Some radicals support the proportional system. How do you solve that?

A: We respect individual choices, but the party as such has a clear-cut position on the majority system. For the rest, any form of conscientious objection is absolutely legitimate.

Q: After the referendum there is the post-referendum.

Q: Granted we win the referendum, as I hope, we will then need to pass an electoral law for the Chamber. We positively need to rule out any mixed system there.

Q: What about preschedule elections?

A: It's out of the question. The election needs to be held at least after having decided the electoral system. Obviously we can't hold an election with a system in which the Chamber votes one way and the Senate another.

Q: What about the transnational front?

A: On the one hand we are active with the "league for the abolition of the death penalty by the year 2000". I am particularly glad that the Italian project of the international crimes tribunal has accepted the principle that whatever the offence, the application of the death penalty is out of the question. I hope the United Nations will maintain this clause. Then we will have to tackle the emergency of ex-Yugoslavia.

Q: There are other populations that have problems. The Palestinians, for instance.

Q: True, there is a wide choice. In this case, it is a question that generally concerns the international law, and particularly the capacity for repression. Once we solve this, we get straight to the problem of democratizing the UN Security Council. The entire foreign policy is controlled by the executives, without any democratic counter-part, neither parliamentary nor consultive. That is the essence of the transnational party: the fact is that the Security Council is formed by the powers that won the war. Since then the Yalta order has prevailed, which collapsed nonetheless two years ago. The risk is that the new American order will prevail, whereas the real problem is that the international law must prevail. And this applies both to the Palestinians and to the question of the whaling convention. The establishment of a permanent crimes tribunal is thus indispensable.

Q: In conclusion, thirty thousand new members for the Radical Party of 1993 in a few days thanks to a major campaign. Will you start all over again in a year's time?

A: Yes, but we hope people have understood now, and that we won't need to beg them to join.

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) 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.