ABSTRACT: The text reports on the decision taken during the Convention held at the Hotel Ergife in Rome on 10 October 1993, to create a "Democratic Party", the "party of liberal revolution, in Pannella's (1) words. The first step of this revolution is the introduction of "Liste Pannella" at the administrative elections of November. But the radical leader warns that such introduction "is already jeopardized": the electoral competition is once again a swindle. "The state is outlaw".

The article gives an account of two other occasions when extraordinary decisions were taken after electoral manipulations had been denounced: in 1972, when the radical party asked the country "to abstain from voting" as the "only truly effective reaction", "the only truly effective opposition"; and in 1983, when it launched a massive "non-vote" campaign combined with the introduction of the lists "For those who will instead want to vote"...

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 26 October 1993)

Sunday 10 October. The foundations of the Democratic Party are being laid in the hall of the Ergife Hotel in Rome. The party of the "liberal revolution", as announced by Pannella, will become a reality on the basis of the "Liste Pannella" at the November administrative elections. But the radical leader warns that the introduction of these lists is "already jeopardized". Why? Because once again the electoral competition is manipulated: the media do not guarantee equal rules for all. "Once again, the state is outlaw", warns the radical leader.

It is typical of a regime based on party power to rely on manipulated elections: the distortion in the access to the media, the illegal financing of the parties, the management of the state apparatus, all make it extremely difficult for a political force that is not part of the regime, for an "innocent" party, to take part in the electoral contest.

We abstained

In 1972 a group of radicals - Mellini, Pannella, Sircana, Spadaccia, Teodori (2) - decided to explore the possibility of reaching a political agreement with the group of "Il Manifesto". Those were the first early elections of the republic, called by President Giovanni Leone (3) to postpone the referendum on divorce and managed by an Andreotti (4) cabinet which had received a vote of no-confidence from Parliament. "The reactionary, conservative and reformist parties of the regime", the five radicals write in their letter to "Il Manifesto" (5) "have planned and imposed early and manipulated elections. Popular sovereignty, universal suffrage, the electorate's opinion, have been trampled by a "racket" which, with the monopoly of public information, excludes any real chances of dialogue and institutional and democratic struggle for any new force". Il Manifesto rejected the five radical exponents' proposal.

On 29 March an unusual, scandal-raising declaration was publicly made: "The Radical Party encourages the electorate to abstain from voting as the only possible and necessary reaction, the only truly effective opposition which a serious and conscious minority of radicals and socialists, democrats and libertarians, can express towards a regime that rejects every possibility of renewal and is devoid of any real political alternative". The bitterest criticism was addressed at the traditional left-wing forces: "The leading classes of the left are asking the electors to strengthen their parliamentary representation in order to have better chances of manipulating the Christian Democrats and the interests it represents". In those years voting was considered compulsory, and anyone who refused was punished with strict sanctions. "Once again we will have early elections: we need to prepare to face these, not others, with clarity and clairvoyance", wrote Pannella on April 1, 1972. Those year's elections were the first o

f an uninterrupted series of elections called before the natural expiry of the legislature for reasons of party interest.

Non-violent boycott

1983. There we go again. Once again, early elections. Why on earth? For what reason? Easy: the socialist party is afraid it will lose votes and is blackmailing the country. The republicans and the communists join in. "Since the answer seems to be the acceptance of the blackmail", Pannella explains in a statement on March 2, "we need to ask what lies behind all this. It is legitimate to doubt that the decision is driven by the same obscure international sources that have been influencing the Mediterranean area for twenty years, and which almost brought about a coup d'état. In such context we should consider De Lorenzo's attempted coup, the so-called strategy of tension and the use of terrorism, the P2 (6). The plan was about to be successfully carried out with the kidnapping and failed murder of D'Urso. It is no mystery, Pannella continued, that NATO sectors and multinational companies are by now convinced, as certain "modern" industrialists like De Benedetti are, that this year it will taken some "extraordin

ary event" to "cancel" the huge economic deficit of the community and to allow for management and development".

The radicals, who have organized important political campaigns - the campaign against world hunger and the one to obtain a reform of the pensions - decided to attack, launching a massive campaign for non-vote and introducing the lists in order to anticipate the electoral campaign". "Refusing to vote as a first choice: to those who want to vote, we advise them to choose the radical party". They were the lists with Toni Negri...

"We will leave no stone unturned", Marco Pannella explained in an article on Notizie Radicali of May 2, "to propagandize, organize and affirm the non-violent boycotting of an obscure operation aiming to impose a "major reform" in Italy in the next few months, of an "controlled administration", of an authoritarian and militarist change". "We cannot explain the crisis", Massimo Teodori says, "without including the P2 affair in the political puzzle". "All radicals elected", Pannella guarantees, "will assume no commitment among those issuing from the constitutional indications, precisely because they have been violated". This commitment was respected as usual.

Translator's notes

(1) 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.

(2) TEODORI MASSIMO. (Force 1938). Italian member of Parliament and senator. Among the founders of the Italian Communist Party. Architecture graduate, professor of American history at the State University, at the John Hopkins University and at the LUISS. In Parliament he has focussed on the problems relative to the greatest political scandals. Expert in electoral techniques.

(3) LEONE GIOVANNI. (Naples 1908). Prime Minister (1963-'68), then of the Republic (1971-'78), was forced to resign after being implicated in the Lockheed scandal, following the referendum on public funds to parties, promoted by the Radical party.

(4) ANDREOTTI GIULIO. (Rome 1919). Exponent of the Christian Democratic Party. Secretary of A. De Gasperi, very young, as under-secretary of the Presidency of the Council, he began an uninterrupted career as minister: Interior (1954), Finance (1955-58), Treasury (1958-59), Defence (1959-66), Industry (1966-68), Budget (1974-76). Prime Minister from 1972 to 1973, then from 1976 to 1979 and from 1990 to date.

(5) IL MANIFESTO. Monthly magazine (and political movement) established in 1969 by exponents of the communist party (A. Natoli, R.Rossanda, L.Pinto, L.Magri, etc.) who were later expelled. In 1971, the magazine became a daily newspaper and supported communist formations not represented in Parliament.

(6) P2. Name of a masonic lodge, whose members were covered by secrecy. Headed by Licio Gelli. Believed to be the organization which masterminded obscure political schemes and administered huge financial scandals. Dissolved in 1981 following a decision of the government. Its members practically all suffered a long political and social quarantine.