The crisis is more and more serious. It seems that 1994 will be an even more difficult year. The European tragedy and the tragedy of the U.N. are spinning out of control.

In Italy, after the corruption scandal, there no signs of civil and political reprise.

What about the radical party? Will it still have the strength to carry out its initiatives?

ABSTRACT: The secretary of the radical party Emma Bonino (1) gives an account of the most important moments in the life of the party, from the extraordinary enrolment of 37.000 people in March 1993 to the attack against the "old" and "new" radicals launched by the press after this political success, from the general assembly in Sofia in July 1993 to the success of the campaign for the creation of an international tribunal against war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. It is necessary to resume the battle to oppose the generalized decay to promote the "nobleness of politics", the clarity of the transnational political project. Thus, memberships to the radical party must be renewed.

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Dear,

Between January and March 1993 you joined the Radical Party along with 37,000 more people. As the corruption scandal spread, you wanted to show your trust and support to the only party that upholds the "nobleness of politics" to counter the growing and widespread corruption, disenchantment and cynicism. Along with 37.000 others you showed courage and clairvoyance. Yours was a decision of great moral value, in itself an expression of that "nobleness of politics" you wanted to rescue. In the weeks and hours when the memberships were being collected, when the hundreds and thousands of citizens were calling the headquarters in Via di Torre Argentina to give their credit card number, we breathed an atmosphere of pride, of deeply-felt and rewarded responsibility, of civil and human solidarity.

I thank you for this courageous decision. Nonetheless, I immediately perceived the profound, difficult meaning of this decision: those memberships were an urgent request to us, and to me personally. With the 13 billion paid you were charging us - and myself - with a great responsibility.

Thus, we started a common initiative with the aim of promoting democratic values. At the beginning of the summer, reliable opinion polls founds that in the country the forces expressed by a group of "historical" radicals concentrated about 8% of the electoral consent. This was enough to make me realize the political (not institutional) potential of the "new Radical Party, which that group is but a small fraction of. The corrupt immediately sounded an alarm: the thirty-seven thousand radical members represented an obstacle to their schemes. Since then we have been the object of countless attacks, against Marco Pannella (2) and all those who support radical values, against the radical history and campaigns, and against the transnational radicals. No stone was left unturned to pollute our identity or to ignore whatever we were doing.

With perseverance and using every possible means and energies, we tried to meet the challenge and respect the commitment taken and the trust received. After paying debts for a total of 6 billion, we tried to use the remaining funds as wisely as possible. We can assure you not one cent was wasted. We worked frenzily throughout the summer and throughout a difficult autumn: in July the Sofia assembly, in order to launch the European project on the basis of an embryo of transnational leading class (570 MPs, members of 80 parties from 60 countries, etc); in September-October, the first step of the initiative for the international tribunal on the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, concluded - for the moment - with the meeting in New York with Boutros Ghali and the official inauguration of the ad hoc tribunal on November 17. This was the fist step towards the institution of a world jurisdiction on crimes against humanity; at the same time, the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty and on antiprohi

bitionism on drugs continued, with the participation in the Baltimore Assembly on November 16; lastly, the editorial launch of "1994, quotidiano radicale", also conceived as a political initiative to penetrate the wall of silence and disinformation (and if you haven't received it or if you have lost some issues you can buy them at Feltrinelli bookshops and in the newsstands of the most important stations. The entire collection is the ideal Christmas gift for friends and family).

Is this a lot or too little? Up to you to decide. We have worked to ensure the continuation in Italy of a political project that was to be - in terms of dignity, force and intransigence - the opposite of the decay we are witnessing daily. And to do this, your contribution was essential. It allowed us to carry on, to persevere day after day. Thanks to these efforts you are not surrounded only by the corruption scandal...

But the results would have been even stronger and visible if the press, the TV media, had given an adequate and correct coverage instead of a distorted and biased one: by political will, by incapacity or simply because of the usual corrupt journalists, slaves of the presumed lords of the moment. If our work had been better publicized we would already have received many more memberships that would allow the party to face 1994 with confidence and backed by substantial financial resources.

It should be clear to everyone that 1994 will be an even more difficult year: for us, for Europe at large, for the country. Remember? In a letter dated December 1992, Marco Pannella wrote that the corruption scandal was an "earthquake", but obviously only the "tip of the iceberg, or the beginning of the quake". He was right: every day we read in the papers about the growing moral decay. Who will resist this decay? Who will counter it with that "nobleness of politics" failing which there can be no credibility, moral force, and clear political plans?

There is no time to lose. We need to resume the battle we began in February 1993. And therefore we need your membership first of all. We need the 37,000 who decided to join last year to renew their membership. I must count on you before I can count on the others we are getting in touch with: the reasons for your decision to join yesterday are vital today too. If I asked you which other subject of hope and trust you met in these months, apart from the radical party, I'm sure the answer would be "none". And therefore it is up to you - to the 37.000 of last year - more than to others to renew your support and trust by renewing your membership for 1994.

Also, please ask others to join.

Cordially,

Emma Bonino

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.