by Raffaele Iaria

ABSTRACT: The interview introduces Emma Bonino, secretary of the transnational radical party, by means of a short portrait followed by the questions and answers with which Bonino illustrates the party's projects.

(PAESE SERA, October 2 1993)

Bologna - "The transnational party? Sounds like a tongue twister: almost as difficult to pronounce as it is to make. Emma Bonino flashes her bright eyes at me almost inquisitively. She is sitting at her table with a lit computer behind her as she answers the phone. Then she lights a cigarette and takes a long puff, straightens out her blouse and smiles at me. Her efficiency is well-known. I was lucky to find her: yesterday she was in New York and tomorrow she may be flying to Sarajevo. On the table are sheets of paper and a few books, and a worn-out international timetable. Years ago in Africa she contracted an intestinal virus that caused her a lot of trouble, but it seems she's quite at home between Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast. She speaks fluent English, which she studied at university in Milan while she was actively involved in the student revolt. She moves about with the same nonchalance in Parliament or at home, in her kitchen, where she cooks delicious Piedmontese specialties (she was born in Bra)

. Women in politics: she doesn't think women should have a separate, more or less privileged role. She has always opposed any bill aiming to reserve a special "share" of the institutional positions to women. "It's not as if we were pandas", she says sharply. Now she is preparing to officially assume the task of secretary of the transnational radical party, which she was elected at the last congress. The pictures of a crying Emma Bonino being appointed secretary are still vivid enough, but there seems to be no trace of that moment of weakness. She has opened the debate at the assembly of parliamentarians and of the members of the party's general council that took place last July.

Q: Why did you choose Sofia?

A: For countless reasons, both practical and political. Sofia offered good conditions of permanence at a reasonable cost, and for a party like ours which is constantly forced to reckon with its resources, this is essential. Also, Sofia is the centre of the Balkans. In other words, the heart of the hottest area of Europe, where decisive events could take place once again...It's odd that once again it's us radicals who are discovering or re-discovering things. In Italy and in Europe the political class mostly ignores all these countries and their problems. But it was precisely in Sarajevo, in June 1914, that the Serbian student Gavrillo Pincip murdered the archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sofia, and World War I broke out...

Q. "Well, let's hope that..." I show some incredulity, but she doesn't give me the time to finish the sentence.

Q: Rubbish. How can we fail to see how dangerous the entire European situation is? It seemed that with the fall of the Berlin Wall everything was solved, that our so-called democratic and liberal leading classes were preparing to celebrate the final victory of freedom, democracy and tolerance. And now we have Germany which is plagued by some of the worst surges of xenophobia, the right-wing political parties on the rise everywhere, the corruption scandal in Italy, Russia forced to tackle an impossible reform and the Balkan area on the verge of exploding. There's more than enough, don't you think?

Q: What do you plan to do in these circumstances?

A: Well, we want to at least try doing something. When we launched the project of the transnational party everyone laughed at us. People thought this was Pannella's (2) last brain-child. Today we are the only ons who can talk in Moscow, Ouagadougou or Burkina Faso, with what remains of the public opinion and democratic class, to try to defend or relaunch democracy.

Q: What are the material projects you are pursuing?

A. There are plenty of projects, the question is whether we will manage to launch them. First of all there is the question of the United Nations. We can all see what is going on in Somalia or in Bosnia or in Cambodia, or in any area where the UN is committed to restoring peace and is instead trapped in a web of wars, seditions or, at best, impotence. Well, we believe the time has come to give effective force and powers to the UN, allowing it to truly become a forum where countries can discuss and realize more democracy. There must be a common effort: those who think that each country, each nation, can regulate its own problems separately are for a major deception.

The United Nations also needs to face the problem of ecology with a global approach. The time of small-scale ecology is over and gone. At this stage the entire global ecosystem is at risk; at the Rio Conference, a few months ago, we were told this quite clearly. Did that change anything? What are the environmentalists doing? Also, there is the huge problem of the death penalty, and of abolishing it by the year 2000. The death penalty is being re-adopted as the only "system" to solve problems of dissidence or "difference" all over the world, from the United States to Russia to the Islamic countries...

Q: That is a major problem. Aren't you a bit over-confident, or unrealistic? She fires a glance at me and answers without hesitating.

A: So what? Let's drop the "unrealistic", it's a word I never use. But for the rest...yes, we do "presume to be able to do something, if this is being presumptuous. Especially if we manage to make it clear to people that they must join the transnational party. Have you joined? No? Well, you can still do so, the membership campaign didn't close in February...The United Nations has established the Tribunal for the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity. At our suggestion, Italy - the Amato government - introduced a project of its own which the United Nations has welcomed as one of the bases for the creation of the Tribunal. According to this project, the death penalty will never be used to punish crimes against humanity...You will see the amount of contradiction that are going to explode in countries where the death penalty is used normally....

I could mention many other examples.

Q. You haven't told me anything about Italy yet.

A:I don't think the problems I mentioned concern Italy directly or indirectly. As you know, we will never again introduce "radical" lists in Italy or elsewhere. But those who think that the Italian problems can only be tackled in Parliament or during the election are badly mistaken. What we are most interested in is restoring the "nobleness of politics", the ability to develop projects, to defend the institutions against the wise guys, the fake moralists, etc. The phone starts ringing again. She makes a grimace as if to say "I can't help it", and waves her hand. Ok. The interview is over, goodbye Emma.

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.