L'onorevole Mario Ambrosini da Città del Capo candida Marco Pannella al Nobel per la Pace

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Created on Thursday, 07 June 2012 12:23

Il deputato italo-sudafricano Mario G.R. Ambrosini ha sottoposto alla Commissione norvegese del Premio Nobel la candidatura di Marzo Pannella al Nobel per la Pace. La sua lettera di presentazione della proposta si chiude con la frase: "Io non conosco nessun'altra persona la cui lotta non violenta di una intera vita sia più meritevole di ricevere il riconoscimento del Premio Nobel per la Pace di quella di Marco Pannella".

La missiva dell'onorevole Ambrosini, che nel Parlamento sudafricano rappresenta l'Inkatha Freedom Party, rileva che "Marco Pannella è stato un campione del metodo politico della non violenza e della causa dei diritti umani in tutto il mondo per oltre 50 anni di impegno politico e sociale. Egli - dice Ambrosini - ha impersonato nei nostri tempi i principi del Mahatma Gandhi".

"Marco Pannella - ricorda il deputato di Cape Town - lanciò il metodo della non violenza in Italia durante i conflitti della Guerra Fredda, quando la mobilitazione politica attiva e coraggiosa era spesso associata alla violenza". E in questi 60 anni di turbolenza politica in Italia e in Europa, "la statura morale delle sue tante campagne gli ha consentito di restare immune da corruzione, scandali e miserie".

La proposta dell'onorevole Ambrosini (nella foto con la moglie) contiene ovviamente la motivazione per cui Pannella dovrebbe ricevere il Nobel e la sua biografia politica. La motivazione si apre con la frase: "Perché vogliamo credere in un mondo nel quale la coscienza e le idee di un solo uomo possono fare la differenza". E continua: "Giacinto Pannella, noto come Marco Pannella, dovrebbe ricevere il Premio Nobel per la Pace per l'importanza e la rilevanza del suo esempio di un'intera vita nelle conflittualità del mondo di oggi. L'attuale stagione di difficoltà economiche e protratti conflitti è destinta a perpetuare la proliferazione delle proteste. Negli ultimi cinquanta anni Pannella ha impersonato la leadership individuale capace di mobilitare grandi energie morali al servizio di proteste significative che hanno cambiato il mondo in modo benefico e costruttivo, ma utilizzando esclusivamente il metodo della non violenza".

Riportiamo qui di seguito i documenti che compongono la proposta nella versione originale in lingua inglese:

Letter to the Nobel Committee

Norwegian Nobel Committee
Att: Torill Johansen  
Henrik Ibsens, Gate 51
0255 Oslo, Norway
Via email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.   This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Re:    Nobel Peace Prize Nomination of Marco Pannella

Dear Sir or Madam:
As a Member of the National Assembly of the Republic of South Africa, I am honored to hereby nominate Giacinto Pannella, better known as Marco Pannella, born in Teramo, Italy on May 3, 1930 for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize would recognize what he has done and achieved, as prizes usually do, thereby inspiring others on the same path, with no need of factoring in what he may still do in the future.

Through is boundless energy, personal initiative and charismatic leadership, Marco Pannella has championed the political method of nonviolence and the cause of human rights throughout the world during more than 50 years of social and political commitment.  He has embodied during our times the practice of Mahatma Gandhi, whose assassination prevented him from seeking this recognition.
 
Marco Pannella launched the method of nonviolence in Italy during the conflicts of the Cold War when active and outspoken political mobilization was often associated with violence, thereby creating a durable political home for needed constructive moral protest.    The moral high ground of his many campaigns have allowed him to sail through 60 years of turbulent Italian and European politics remaining untouched by corruption, scandals or pettiness.

 He has been the initiator and catalyst of forces which have changed the world for the better, ranging from the introduction of divorce in Italy to the emergence of the environmental movement in Europe, to the worldwide campaign to stop genocide by starvation, to the promotion of democracy in the former Soviet Empire, to the worldwide campaign to suspend the death penalty, to the campaign for the creation of a international court of justice, to a myriads of campaigns to promote human rights protection and democracy in specific countries.   In order to promote these and many other successful campaigns he repeatedly placed his life on the line with extreme hanger strikes.

This year, in spite of being an octogenarian, be conducted a life-threatening hunger and thirst   strike to expose the conditions of Italian prisons which violate basic human rights and have been responsible for several suicides.  Pannella’s life was saved by the intervention of the President of the Italian Republic who solemnly acknowledged the correctness of Pannella’s campaign and urged the Italian Government urgent corrective measures.

It is a cliché that democratic vigilance is essential to the survival of democracy, yet it is rarely practiced in Western democracies where the spaces of freedom and liberty are rapidly diminishing.

The last General Assembly of the Unrepresented People and Nation Organization [UNPO], held jointly with the General Council of Pannella’s movement and in the Italian Senate in Rome, Italy on May 27, 2010, acknowledged that its owes its existence to Pannella initiative and genius.  -  See www.unpo.org/content/view/11186/259/ -  Were it not for the UNPO, often those represented in the UNPO would have no representation and way to be heard, and, in certain cases, no option open to their political struggle but violence.  Their membership in the UNPO binds them all both to mutual solidarity as well as to nonviolence and their method of political action.

The UNPO’s General Assembly convened more than 70 oppressed peoples and nations with very disparate political agendas, ideologies and creeds, proving the viability of Pannella’s brand of nonviolence as a unifying method.  Perhaps the most salient proof of this was that through the efforts of Pannella’s emissaries even the representatives of the Afrikaner’ quest for self determination joined the UNPO and were given a sit on the UNPO’s Presidency. See www.unpo.org/content/view/11186/259/

Afrikaners ruled South Africa during apartheid, when Black people where not only disenfranchised but prohibited to travel abroad to join organizations such as the UNPO to lament their condition, and imprisoned if they did so.  As poetic justice wanted it, the Afrikaner’s delegation was headed by South African Deputy Minister for Agriculture, the Hon, Pieter Mulder, the son of Connie Mulder, the protégé of apartheid creator and strongman Prime Minister Vorster.  Connie Mulder was a apartheid Cabinet Minister and the key figure in the “Muldergate”, the scandal which exposed how apartheid controlled the press.

For those like me who has seen and been involved in conflicts worldwide and smelled the impending civil war during the transition from apartheid to democracy, this is nothing short of miraculous.  Seeing people of all colors and such different and opposing creeds, ideologies and political agendas sitting together and speaking at the unison in a manner which would has yet to happen in the United Nations shows how both people and peoples can be unified when a forum is created for them to experience their shared humanity.

Such wonders are the result of the work and vision of a single man: Marco Pannella.  At 81, Marco Pannella remains unknown to the great majority of people in our world and, like Gandhi, may not have much opportunity left for recognition, in spite of the immensely beneficial value of his example and work for the cause of mankind’s peace and final reconciliation with its troubled self.  Granted to him, the Nobel Peace Prize would reward results and the value of a legacy, rather than merely reflecting popularity in the world media headlines and household names.

I know of no person whose life-long nonviolent struggle for peace and justice is more deserving of Nobel Peace Prize recognition than Marco Pannella’s.   I hope that this year’s award will reflect this.   A fuller motivation follows.   Unfortunately this motivation is somehow incomplete as Marco Pannella and his immediate staff have not been contacted to assist in this initiative
Yours sincerely,
 
Mario G.R. Oriani-Ambrosini, MP

Pannella’s Political Biography  
Edited extracts from Pannella’s 1993 Parliamentary Biography by Angiolo Bandinelli

The Italian seventh legislature was inaugurated on 5 July 1976 with the usual solemnity.  The interim president of the opening session, Nilde Jotti (1), had just gone through the preliminaries when the newly-elected Member of Parliament Marco Pannella, elected in the radical party's lists, asked to speak.  His point of order was unprecedented and broke the rigidity of protocols which had long inhibited discussions within the Italian Parliament, marking the beginning of the radicals' parliamentary season.
Four radicals had finally entered Montecitorio after a decade of militant initiatives carried out outside legislative fora and "in the streets and the prisons", as they put it (2).
The electoral response rewarded the only partly whose civil rights campaigns were acknowledged as having changed and modernized the country. In 1970, Parliament had passed the Fortuna-Baslini (3) Bill on divorce and in 1974 a referendum promoted by Catholic associations and sections of the Democrazia Cristiana (“DC”) (4) aimed at abrogating it.  This referendum was won by the "secularist front" created by Pannella with the support of the millions of citizens which expressed through it an unprecedented vote of opinion, free from the influence of, and ideological allegiance to, political parties, in an unprecedented civilized debate.  
In 1975, in the aftermath of the referendum, the radicals started collecting signatures for an even more sensational referendum to decriminalize abortion. Intellectuals such as Pasolini (5), liked the civil rights leader and attempted a Marxist translation of his libertarian language. The widespread feeling was that the country was far more advanced than its political leaders, which were caught by surprise and confused. Immediately after the vote on divorce, Enrico Berlinguer (6) advocated a prompt resumption of the dialogue between the Marxist and Catholic masses to mend the division brought about by the referendum and to pave the way for the coveted “historical compromise” (7) meant to lead communists to power.
Early elections were held in 1976 and called with the purpose of postponing the feared clash on the abortion issue. The same had occurred four years earlier in respect of divorce, but in 1972 Pannella announced that radicals would abstain from voting to protest this practice, which, as they wrote, turned the elections into a "swindle". The DC and the Italian Communist Party (“PCI”) radicalized and polarized the electoral campaign, succeeding in reaping their maximum share of votes, while the Italian Socialist Party (“PSI”), having suffered a severe defeat, started a drastic renewal of its leaders appointing Bettino Craxi (8) as secretary. The radicals obtained 1,1% of votes in the Assembly and 0,8% at the Senate. During the campaign Pannella began a non-stop hotline on Radio Radicale, which proved decisive in reaching over the threshold quorum and projecting a personal success for Pannella with almost 40% of the votes received being specifically given to him.
During the campaign, with a long and exhausting hunger strike, Pannella had obtained a political broadcast from the state-owned TV, which the radical list was not entitled to: but Pannella had long been warning that the future of political democracy itself was in the hands of the media, and therefore primarily in the conduct of the state-owned TV.
The radical leader's political activity had begun with an intense militancy in the university organizations, which were at the time the breeding ground for political leadership. At twenty, Pannella was his university’s national delegate of the liberal party, which he had become acquainted with by reading Mario Pannunzio's (9) "Risorgimento Liberale".  At twenty-three, he was president of the UNURI, the unitary organization of university students. In 1955 he was one of the most passionate supporters of the foundation of the radical party – a "new party for a new politics" – and with this formation he engaged in an unsuccessful electoral campaign in 1958 together with the republican party.
In 1960 he worked in Paris as a foreign correspondent for "Il Giorno" newspaper. There he started active relations with the Algerian resistance; but when the radical party, crushed by inner divisions and by the advent of the centre-left politics, faced a serious crisis and risked its final dissolution, he returned to Italy to receive a difficult legacy, together with a few friends and supporters of the "radical left".  His line was characterized by ideal continuity, but also by major innovations: in the tradition of the controversies carried out by Ernesto Rossi (10) and of the socialist libertarian and humanitarian tradition, Pannella insisted on an inflexible anticlericalism and antimilitarism, and supported the civil rights campaigns which had broken out that year in the universities of America and Europe with unprecedented militant initiatives in Italy and with the force of Gandhian nonviolence.
1965 marked the beginning of the campaign for divorce, in cooperation with Loris Fortuna. Two years earlier, the press investigated the malfeasance within ENI (11), the scandal of welfare assistance and the Rome-based OMNI (12), which implicated the mayor of Rome, Amerigo Petrucci (13). In the meantime, an intense dialogue developed with Aldo Capitini on the meaning and the forms of nonviolence for the renewal of politics not only in Italy. Sensational juridical initiatives were undertaken, which ended in most cases with victorious trials that drew the attention of the public and of political leaders otherwise focused on economic problems and "planning", to the issues of justice and law.  Pannella's vast production of texts, speeches and pamphlets tried to define a liberal theory and praxis open to individuals and segments of society traditionally distant from politics and disempowered.
Pannella's liberalism is certainly secular but not anti-religious, and rooted in an ancient libertarianism for which the most important freedom is the opponent’s freedom of the person who is different or seen as such. In this respect Pannella accepted the editorship of newspapers such as "Lotta Continua" (14), even though he didn't share their policy, simply to ensure their survival.
Nonviolence has been Pannella’s newfound linchpin for a balance between extreme actions and civilized discourse, and has underpinned his hunger strikes, direct mass demonstrations and sit-ins promoted both in Italy and in any part of the world where freedom was threatened and during a season in which protest was most needed.  
As in 1968, when Pannella and other militants demonstrated in the countries of Eastern
Europe to protest against the Soviet invasion of Prague, Pannella's liberalism aimed at a socially conscious alternative to socialism. Italy had been a de facto one-party state for 35 years, effectively acting as the heir of the structures and society of the one-party state of the '30s.  Young students' leaders had already urged Palmiro Togliatti (15) to initiate the communist masses to democratic reformism, repeating the experiment in university organizations on a national scale.
During the campaign of 1976, Pannella solemnly pledged that the radicals would change Parliament, and would not be changed by it.  He pledged that radicals would not give in to the temptations of power. Parliament was already jeopardized by an evident crisis of functionality and credibility, and damaged in its most delicate prerogatives, mainly by parties in power. This process was already visible, despite the fact that new rules enacted in 1971 separated the "rule of the majority" from the "procedural rules". This was supposed to be a major democratic achievement and progress as compared to the liberal eighteenth century model which was still being abided by. The procedural rules were entrusted to the Assembly in a delicate balance of powers between majority and opposition to be equally guaranteed by proportional representation.
The radicals rejected the government of national unity opened to the communists and all that which could prevent a clear constitutional and liberal distinction between majority and opposition. Therefore their attention toward rules and procedures was certainly not coincidental. They pursued procedural amendments, requested correct interpretations and rulings, and opposed everything that seemed an inadequate or arbitrary interpretation of the rules.
At the same time, they emphasized the neglected function of parliamentary oversight and the right to address the Assembly, and did so over the processing of legislation.  They also monitored the parliamentary legislative processes for compliance with the rules. This effective and insistent practice challenged the constitutional traditions and the way Members of Parliament were used to operating, including absenteeism, incompetence which produced impotence, and tolerance for degrading working conditions which deprived Members of any means to control legislation and even of a place to carry out their daily work, thereby reducing them to choreography.
After the initial bemusement, the strategy used by Pannella and his radical colleagues caused perplexities and intolerance, as soon as it became clear that the four parliamentarians were creating for themselves a role of genuine parliamentary opposition, in its most classic, Anglo-Saxon form. Great concern was expressed in particular by the PCI, whose meek role in the balancing of power with the ruling DC was to be justified exclusively on account of the limits of the parliamentary rules of 1971.
The combined efforts to neutralize and "discourage" the radical initiative were immediate, both by consolidating the relation between the DC and the PCI and by starting an aggressive campaign against "provocations", the "destabilizing acts" and the paralysis of the Assembly  by means of filibustering. The radicals had brought the tensions of the streets into Parliament making Parliament finally relevant and reducing confrontations at the street level. The intense confrontations involved the Rules Committee and the President of the Assembly, Pietro Ingrao (16).
Soon rigid or restrictive interpretations – or subtle redefinitions – of the rules began to be applied whenever possible, so as to reduce the interpretations favorable to the radicals and their actions. But Pannella urged the DC and the PCI to accept that parliamentary inefficiencies and delays were not to be ascribed to the recent filibustering, an appellative that Pannella always rejected, but rather to the deterioration which the very policy of national unity was causing. The objective symptom of the difficulties within the system was the increasing use on the part of the many Andreotti (17) governments of the urgent decrees with force of law, despite the fact that the PCI passed most of the bills introduced by the government in Parliament or in the Commissions, thus creating a majority which almost reached an unprecedented 95%.
This fiery debate found no echo in the country, as the radicals had hoped; neither the press nor the TV, even after the reform of 1975, gave accurate coverage of what was happening in Parliament. During a political broadcast in 1978, Pannella demonstrated the full potentials of TV by the four radicals using up the few minutes allotted to them to explain the themes of the referendum by wearing gags, in an unreal silence which meant to denounce the silence of the media and the impossibility of the opposition making their voice heard in the country.  
The harshest conflicts occurred during the Moro (18) affair. Tension had long been developing in the country, caused by the terrorism of the Red Brigades (19), while both government and opposition relied on an increasingly repressive legislation, scarcely concerned about civil rights. In fact, the "defense of civil liberties" was criticized as if it were a surrendering to armed violence. In May 1977, during a nonviolent demonstration organized by the radicals, a young woman, Giorgiana Masi (20), was killed. Unquestionable photographs showed the presence of undercover police forces caught as they were shooting. Pannella's attack on the then Minister of the Interior, Cossiga (21), was harsh.
During the tragic 55 days of Moro's kidnapping, Pannella expressed his concern for the fact that Parliament had not been summoned.  The "ostracism and obstructionism" against the "right and duties" of the representative institutions, had "robbed" these institutions of their essential functions of monitoring and directing a situation of extreme gravity for the country. Moro's survival, Pannella warned, was to depend primarily on the respect for legality and the functions of Parliament.  
The Assembly was summoned, but only to discuss the referendums promoted by the radicals, to pass laws pertaining to public order: the so-called "Reale-bis" (22) and an "antiterrorism" decree assigned to two different Commissions in contravention of the rules, without any guaranties as to the transparency of the work, and with emergency procedures which prompted charges of "coup d’état"  from constitutional experts such as Silvano Tosi and Francesco Cosentino who expressed their open concern for the violations of the rules. Pannella's opposition was stifled and Pannella was even expelled by the Justice Committee.
While the alignments in Parliament became increasingly unstable, in a general climate of tense concern, on June 11 and 12, 1978 there was a vote on the two referenda which the Constitutional Court and Parliament had not rejected out of the initial package of eight promoted in 1977: the one on the public financing of political parties and the one on public order (Act no. 152 of 22 May 1975, the so-called "Reale Act"). The popular reaction to the referendum relative to the public financing of the political parties was most favorable even though formally not successful. Over 13 million people voted to abrogate it reaching 43,7% support. The PCI, extremely concerned, was forced to partly reject the compromising practice, and President of the Republic, Giovanni Leone (23), implicated in the Lockheed scandal, was forced to resign. Sandro Pertini (24) was elected the new president, and his election was to pave the way for the secular prime ministers Spadolini (25) and Craxi.
Leonardo Sciascia (26), to whom Pannella personally offered a position in the Assembly and in the European Parliament in the elections of 1979, in "omnibus" lists open to new energies and to all those deceived by Berlinguer's line, had sided with the pro-civil rights and humanitarian position. The writer accepted. The radicals obtained 3,4% and twenty elected representatives in the two branches of Parliament, while they managed to obtain three seats in the European Parliament. Sciascia and Pannella made it both to the Assembly and the European Parliament.  At the European elections, Pannella obtained almost 100,000 votes of preference.
The debate on the rules and on the role of the Assembly reached dramatic peaks during the discussion of decree no. 625 pertaining to "urgent measures for the protection of the democratic order and public security", introduced by the Cossiga administration. The leftist parties rejected an agreement with the radicals, who had offered to withdraw the 7,500 amendments introduced, and the PCI blamed the radicals' filibustering for the impossibility of "improving" the governmental text. The President of the Assembly, Nilde Jotti, with an unprecedented interpretation, established that each Member could speak only once to illustrate his amendments, regardless of their number. Thus, the decree was passed on February 2, 1980, and the PCI gave a vote of confidence to the Cossiga government. The provision - wrote Sciascia - was not only “useless”, but “wiped away the very idea of the rule of law in this country".
The Cossiga decree materially provided the last opportunity for major procedural debates. Soon after, a drastic revision of the rules of 1971 was carried out, as these rules had proven too open to a determined opposition, and useless with regard to the new priorities of the parties.
The emergency, or the "culture of the emergency", entered into permanent conflict with all those who advocated a liberal concern for civil rights. In such climate, an extraordinary congress of the radical party was held in Rome in March 1980, called right before the local government elections. Pannella proposed a document which was to become the "Preamble" to the Statute, which advocated the unconditional respect of the law as the "insurmountable source of legitimacy of the institutions", and with unusual passion recalled the duty "to disobedience, to non-cooperation, to conscientious objection, to the supreme forms of nonviolent struggle to uphold - with life - life, the rule of law, and legality".
December 12, marked the beginning of the D'Urso (27) affair, in which the moments, problems and lacerations of the Moro affair seemed to re-emerge, aggravated as they were by concerns and suspicions of alleged attempts to use authoritarian solutions, in the probable scenario of the judge having been killed, under the shadow of the P2 lodge (28) and with the open support of the press and of political forces. Pannella expressed these concerns and suspicions.
1981 was the year of the referendum on abortion and of the "Manifesto of Nobel Laureates". On the 17th and 18th of  May, the country was called to vote on the radical referendum and on one of the referendums proposed by the Movement for Life, which was meant to change Act no. 194 of 1978. Moreover, the country was supposed to vote on three more referenda proposed by the radicals, pertaining to public order, gun licensing and life imprisonment. These were the only three not rejected by the Constitutional Court from an initial package of ten. The package represented the greatest effort made by Pannella in the field of referenda. In a fiery debate, it also became the cause for a violent anti-radical campaign carried out by the leftist parties. At the polls, all the referendums were rejected. The result caused discouragement and perplexity among the radicals, and Pannella called an extraordinary congress held in early June 1981 in a tent in Villa Borghese (29).
Pannella reminded the participants of the "three linchpins" of the party's campaigns, viz. "nonviolence, legality and referenda" to "take from the Constitution and from everyday life, that bipartisanism which only with the practice of the referenda we have been able and are trying to achieve in the country"; a bipartisanism based on alternation and on an alternative "to the huge legal tradition of Alfredo Rocco (30) and of the corporative state".
To all those who objected against the abstract nature of the campaign on world hunger, started in 1979, the radical leader confirmed its reasons and objectives which were illustrated in the "Manifesto", written by Pannella himself, which was introduced a few days later on the 24th and 25th of  June with the signatures of 53 Nobel Laureates.  Later 28 more Nobel Laureates endorsed the appeal together with Heads of Government, cultural and religious representatives and mayors. The "Manifesto of Nobel Laureates" outlined the main points of the struggle to defeat "the new Holocaust" of our time: the death, by starvation and poverty, of masses of men, women and children of the Third and Fourth World.
In his minority report on the Moro case, of June 1982, Leonardo Sciascia wrote that "the strongest obstacle, the real hindrance, the most dangerous impediment" to the survival of the statesman came from "the decision not to recognize, in the prisoner of the Red Brigades, the man of great political capacity, the author of pondered opinions and choices...", so that "finding the 'other' Moro alive would almost mean finding him dead in a Renault". These were heavy judgments, containing a moral, more than political, censure, which were bound to increase the radicals' isolation.
This was the price to pay for all parties which signed off the non-negotiation-with-terrorists policy which led to Moro’s assassination; but was also a point of force. And yet, the radicals sensed its weight as it gradually shared it with the PSI, with which it had shared positions on various occasions during the Moro and D'Urso affairs. In fact, at a certain point the PSI enhanced its pressure to such an extent that it attracted into its area MPs and exponents of the radical party.
The radicals had traditionally paid much attention to relations with the socialists. Since the time of the divorce issue, they had stressed the elements of libertarian tradition present within that party. In the mid-'70s, Pannella himself advocated a "realignment" between the forces of the left to the advantage of the PSI as the indispensable condition to achieve an alternative to the DC. On several occasions the radical leader tried to maintain this prospect.  But the urgency of the objective was undermined by political leaders who were eager to maintain their primacy and hegemony in a field which was inevitable common. Nor was it easy for the socialists to face the risks contained in Pannella's strategy, out of fear of losing positions of power considered non-renounceable, and in fact to be expanded.
Then came the anticipated elections for the ninth legislature, with the controversial candidacy of Toni Negri (31) in the radical lists.  Immediately thereafter, President Pertini appointed Bettino Craxi Prime Minister. Eager to achieve conditions for a political stability on which to base his image of a reformist socialist capable of checking the instability of the system, Craxi benefited from the "code of conduct" adopted by the radical representatives. The latter, faced with the "invalidation" of the elections and the "seizure of any parliamentary rule on the part of the party in power", had decided that they would not take legislative initiatives or participate in any vote at the Assembly. On several occasions, such as the debate on the Euro-missiles, the radicals' non-vote was decisive, if anything, on a political level. Thus, despite the harsh conflict on this “Concordat”, convergences and agreements were reached on referendum on the cost of living bonus (1985) and for the final vote on the bill introduced by Flaminio Piccoli (32) and by 150 MPs from all groups, except the PCI and the MSI, on world hunger.
In 1986, two thirds of the socialist MPs joined the "League for the Single Nomination Constituency System", created by the radicals. In the same year, the PSI co-promoted with the radicals and the liberals the referenda for "a just justice system". This included the controversial one on the judges' civil responsibility for malpractice – which was developed in the tense climate of the Tortora (33) affair. Throughout the long trial of the TV showman and radical Euro-MP in 1984, radicals and socialists had shared views and conduct which led to a common position of criticism of the magistracy and of the CSM (34). The dialogue between the PSI in charge of the government and the Radical Party at the opposition prompted misunderstandings and suspicions among the parties of the left.
Pannella's efforts to create a strong and autonomous "green platform" for the local government elections of 1985 were followed with mistrust.
The radical leader's denunciation, corroborated by serious historical and political reasons, of the very hypothesis of a "left-wing" alternative, further rekindled suspicions and mistrust. For the elections of 1988, Claudio Martelli hypothesized a contest between the DC, the PCI and an unprecedented secular-radical-socialist front, for which Pannella expressed a forecast of success.
This persuasive prospect triggered more than one concern. In 1987, DC secretary Ciriaco De Mita (35), acting with the consent of PCI secretary Alessandro Natta (36) who had been convinced of the possible dissolution of the five-party coalition, suddenly caused early elections.  Craxi found himself excluded from the government, and the elections took place in a confused political situation, as DC had abstained on the government of Fanfani (37) appointed by President Cossiga after tense consultations, precisely to have early elections.
This concluded the experiment of a socialist government and direction, but it also marked the conclusion of the period of cooperation between the socialists and the radicals. In the new legislature, the socialists were to endorse the law that invalidated the referendum on the judges' civil responsibility, which took place in November 1987. Moreover, they opposed the candidacy of Marco Pannella for EEC Commissioner. Back from the United States, Craxi urged a toughening of the drugs law, which was a clear-cut opposition to the anti-prohibitionist initiative started by Marco Pannella in 1984 as a consequence of the campaigns conducted with the socialist consent as from the '70s.
In October 1989, thanks to the decisive vote also of the socialists, the Assembly unexpectedly accepted the resignation of Marco Pannella, motivated with the denunciation of the law which had dodged the referendum on the judges' civil responsibility and of the "disinformation" campaign carried out by the press and the state-owned TV to the detriment of even Parliament and its image. Pannella's insistence on the subject of public information was not new, but found new justifications.
The change of position of the socialists, now scarcely interested in opening to other secular and green forces, and attracted by the possibility of a new direct juxtaposition with the DC on the subject of the "Great Reforms", enhanced the danger of political suffocation for the radical party and for its political line based on a global growth of the reformist front. The distortion and the destruction of the image, if not of the radical identity, was one of the desirable and primary objectives of a party in power which aimed at a final carving-up of the institutions, the economy and the country. On the other hand, despite Act no. 73 of 1985, the project on world hunger had exhausted its creative momentum. The law adopted by Parliament, while inadequate as compared to the major radical goals, nonetheless had a satisfactory declaration of intentions and definition of objectives on the part of the authority and departed from the undesirable previous practices.
As a positive effect, however, the long campaign on the elimination of world starvation had enlarged the radicals’ horizon far beyond the Italian borders, and had convinced the radical leader that it was necessary to overcome the national dimension to ensure a lasting success of any reformist project of our time. This belief was enhanced by his experience in the European Parliament.
Consistently confirmed as of 1979 as a member of the European Parliament, Pannella carried out important federalist battles side by side with Altiero Spinelli (38) and after his death in a continuity of inspiration, as Spinelli indicated Pannella to be his political heir. At the radical congress in November 1985 in Florence, Pannella managed to pass a resolution whereby "acknowledging the impossibility of exerting the democratic rights and the continuation of its activity", the party entrusted to the statutory organs "the task of proposing a project for the cessation of all activities at the next congress". This was how the project of a "transnational" and "trans-party" party took shape, with new resources, plans of action and beliefs.
The congress of Bologna of January 1988 marked a further step forward, deliberating that the radical party would at once stop participating in the national elections with its own lists and its own symbols.  The "trans-party" emblem took its place.
At the European elections of 1989, radical exponents were presented and elected in various lists such as the greens and social-democratic, while an anti-prohibitionist list of strong radical inspiration was also fairly successful. For his part, Marco Pannella was elected in Strasbourg thanks to an agreement with the PSI and the Liberal Party (PLI), which for a moment even considered a "federation" containing the dispersed secular forces of the other minorities. However, in spite of the scarce electoral results, caused by the indecision of republicans and liberals who opposed Pannella's presence, the notion of secular "pole" was stifled by the opposition of Craxi, who strongly opposed a potentially competitive force.
The appeal addressed by Pannella to the PCI, when its secretary Occhetto (39) prepared to re-found the party, or rather to summon a major "democratic constituent" among the forces of the left, obtained no better results. Fragility or scarcity of beliefs hindered such development. Instead of a "constituent assembly", there was simply a change of name: the Party of Democratic Left (PDS).
No less complicated was the progress of the transnational project. The congress of Budapest in April 1989, confirming the decision to carry on with its realization, entrusted to an extraordinary organ of four members the administration of the party, or of its remaining structures, which remained suspended between liquidation and the adjustment towards the ambitious trans-national project. The deliberations of the federal councils, held symbolically in non-Italian cities  such Brussels, Madrid, Jerusalem, Trieste-Bohiny and Strasbourg, started to develop party policies, but technical and financial difficulties made the creation of minimum structures capable of connecting members of different countries and languages precarious.
The multilingual computer conference system "Agorà" was experimented with, and in May 1991 the first issue of the periodical "The new party" appeared, printed first in 10 and then 14 languages and distributed to 250,000 people, including 40,000 parliamentarians and political exponents from over 100 countries and 4 continents. "At the same hour, in the same form, with the same contents, with the same mass and nonviolent demonstrations,” wrote Pannella in the editorial, “identical legislative texts must be introduced and endorsed in our Parliaments and in our cities, in our 'parties' or in our 'internationals'". The most massive responses came from the countries of Eastern Europe.
On 9 June 1991, a referendum on the single preferential vote for the elections of the Assembly was held, called for by the Committee for Electoral Referendums (COREL), headed by Mario Segni who had joined the "League for the single Candidate Constituency system". In January, the Constitutional Court, which had become a political "filter" on the subject of the referenda, had invalidated the two other questions, which came with the one on the single vote. Nonetheless, the favorable vote of 9th of June, opposed by political parties, while PSI secretary Craxi invited people not to vote, was nonetheless an unmistakable sign of the deep discontent within the public opinion. The popular discontent was accentuated by the pressing initiatives and "statements" of President of the Republic Cossiga, which prompted denunciations of "attempt against the constitution" in Parliament, one introduced in August by Pannella and discussed by the parliamentary committee for authorizations to proceed against MPs.
The vote boosted the referendum movement. In addition to the COREL presided over by Segni, the forces that mobilized in its support were the CORID, the Committee for Democratic Reforms, presided over by Professor Massimo S. Giannini but largely promoted by a number of radical exponents who had already attempted, through the Radical Association for the Democratic Constituent (ARCOD) to involve Pannella to urge his party not to leave the field of institutional reforms to other Italian political subjects. COREL promoted three referenda and the Giannini Committee promoted three more. With a last-moment decision, which prompted surprise and recriminations, the radical party deposited the request for three more referenda, viz. the abrogation of the public financing of the parties, the decriminalization of drug addicts and, in cooperation with the Amici della Terra (40), the reform of the USL (41). The radicals started collecting signatures four days before the other committees, which they extended to all nine referenda. Part of the press, this time, favored the new wave of referenda and Segni was portrayed as a reliable guarantor against the excesses of party power.
The 750,000 signatures collected were handed to the Court of Cassation at the same time in which the 4th Italian Congress of the radical party was opened in Rome on January 9-12, 1992.
At the anticipated elections of 5 April 1992, the gravity of the political parties' crisis became evident in the proliferation of lists, among which there was the "Referendum list" presented by the Giannini Committee thanks to the decisive impulse of the radicals of the ARCOD and with consistent adhesions from exponents of the "liberal" public opinion. In a surprise move, the radical leader presented an unprecedented "Lista Pannella", which embodied the final electoral disappearance of the party of the "rose in the fist". The list was presented as an anticipation of that single candidate Anglo-Saxon type constituency system whereby the votes go not to the parties but to the single candidate. Surprisingly, it obtained 1,2% of the vote and 7 seats in the Assembly, while in the Senate the agreement with the Greens and the Giannini Committee had been unsuccessful and a common list was created.
The predictable massive electoral success of the Lega Nord (42) deeply changed the parliamentary alignments. After the 28th of April when President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga resigned and it became necessary to seek a successor, confrontation for the elections at the institutional positions appeared open and difficult: operating among the uncertainties and concerns of the political forces, Pannella supported Oscar Luigi Scalfaro (43), who was elected President of the Assembly first and then President of the Republic. Vetoes, perplexities and fears prevented a candidacy of Marco Pannella for an important position in the government, while, for his part, the radical leader took a stance of intransigent opposition to the government presided over by Amato (44), which he judged weak and inadequate.
The aggravation of the political situation, including the growing economic crisis, in parallel with the collapse of Europeanist policies based on the Treaty of Maastricht, induced Pannella’s Federalist Group in September to give unconditional support to a government which was involved in a financial and economic emergency policy which was to be forever compromised and internationally discredited by a political and perhaps also institutional blind crisis.
Two local initiatives taken by Pannella should be recalled at this stage: his participation in the regional council of Abruzzo, where he was elected in 1991 in an "Anti-prohibitionist List Against Criminality", and the "one hundred days" as president of the 13th municipal council of the Municipality of Rome, Ostia. In Abruzzo Pannella advocated a "political laboratory", a place in which to foreshadow the renewal of his party structures together with exponents of the PDS and other political forces. In Ostia, during the crisis of the municipal council of Rome which was also implicated in the "Mani Pulite" (45) investigation, he took the opportunity to outline a valid model of governability at the local level. During the hundred days promised at the time of his election, Pannella obtained an unprecedented municipal bylaw which endowed the Roman metropolitan area with ample autonomy to start a serious fight against devastating property speculations.
Despite the deep Italian crisis, Pannella gave maximum priority to the transnational party. The fall of the Berlin wall, the attempted coup in Moscow – with the consequent expulsion of Gorbachev and the dissolution of the USSR – and the terrible crisis of Yugoslavia, offered opportunities for many radical initiatives.  
In June 1991, the radicals decided to endorse the requests for independence of the Republics of Slovenia and Croatia and the demands for concrete autonomy of Kosovo and Macedonia. Interventions at the European and Italian parliaments, hunger strikes, demonstrations in various cities of Europe, and the convocation in October-November of a federal council of the party in Zagreb were moments of a political presence which climaxed in the decision to reach for the areas most affected by the conflict, viz. the cities of Osijek and Nova Gradiska, in an active and nonconformist solidarity with the Slovenian and Croatian populations and against the violations of the law carried out by the Serbian leadership.  
Nonviolent militants and parliamentarians, and firstly Pannella, provokingly and symbolically wore the uniform of the Croatian army. The act was a visible protest and denunciation of the United Nations' hesitation, and especially of the fears, the silences and the compromises of the EEC, divided and impotent as it was in the face of a conflict in which there re-emerged the specters of the fascisms, nationalisms and totalitarianisms which infected Europe after the Spanish civil war.
The first session of the 36th Congress of the transnational party was held from the 30th of April to the 3rd of May in Rome. Dozens of non-Italian political personalities, coming especially from Eastern Europe, attended the congress. Zdravko Tomac (46), Croatian vice premier and member of the party, introduced the motion for an appeal to the international community to intervene in Yugoslavia. Despite the evident political success, the Congress was forced to acknowledge that the subscriptions, especially in Italy, were insufficient to carry on with the project. The conclusions relative to the final consolidation or to the dissolution of the transnational party were thus postponed to a second session to be held in early 1993.
At autumn 1992, the party counted among its members almost 200 parliamentarians including ministers representing 70 parties from at least 30 countries.  However, the number of Italian subscriptions, the only ones high enough to cover the debts and ensure at least one year of the party’s financial life, continued to be insufficient. Thus, the second session of the Congress held on February 4-8, 1993 opened in an atmosphere of great uncertainty. Pannella confirmed the decision to close the party in case the number of subscriptions had not been reached. But this time, sensationally, the destiny of the radicals had a strong emotional and political impact on public opinion, and several exponents of almost all parties, including the Christian Democratic Party, joined the radical party, while the press started a massive campaign of information and support. At the conclusion of the Congress, a committee of outstanding personalities was formed, which assumed the task of promoting a vast membership campaign to guarantee the survival of the radical "trans-party".
The extraordinary turnabout of public opinion was an obvious sign of the new prestige acquired by the radical leader with his parliamentary attitude based on a great institutional loyalty and with the appeal to the "nobility of politics" addressed to the country at a moment in which the entire leading class of the PSI and of the other parties was being overwhelmed by the "Mani Pulite" initiative started by the judiciary in Milan.
 
Footnotes

1.    JOTTI NILDE. (Reggio Emilia 1920). Exponent of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). P. Togliatti’s companion and President of the Assembly from 1979 to 1992.
2.    MONTECITORIO. Square in Rome, seat of the Assembly. In a wider sense it indicates the Assembly itself.
3.    FORTUNA LORIS. (Breno 1924 - Udine 1985). Italian politician. In 1965, he sponsored the bill on divorce by Parliament in 1970 after years of initiatives and campaigns carried out in cooperation with the Radical Party. He also sponsored bills on abortion and passive euthanasia, the latter not adopted. Minister of civil defense and community affairs.
4.    DEMOCRAZIA CRISTIANA (DC). Italian Christian/Catholic party. Founded with this name after World War II, heir of the Popular Party, created after World War I by a Sicilian priest, Don Luigi Sturzo. After the elections of 1948, in the climate of the Cold War, it became the party of relative majority, occasionally coming very close to obtaining the absolute majority. Key component of every cabinet, it held power uninterruptedly for half a century, strongly influencing the development of Italian society with conservative policies. At the elections of 1992 for the first time, it dropped below 30% of the votes.
5.    PASOLINI PIERPAOLO. (Bologna 1922 - Rome 1975). Italian writer and director. Novels ("Ragazzi di vita", 1955; "Una vita violenta", 1959), verse ("Le ceneri di Gramsci", 1957, etc.), plays, cinema ("Accattone", 1961, "Il Vangelo secondo Matteo", 1964, etc.), but especially powerful polemist and moralist, he denounced the evils of "bourgeoisie" morality and severely criticized the Italian left for its shortcomings. Sympathizer of the Radical Party, on the subject of which he wrote some beautiful pages. The day after his death he was supposed to go to Florence to take part in a congress of the party.
6.    BERLINGUER ENRICO. (Sassari 1922 - Padua 1984). Italian politician. MP since 1968, secretary general of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1979 to his death.  After the crisis and assassination of Allende he became an advocate of the "historical compromise" or a quasi government of national unity, which produced, between 1976 and 1979, the so-called "majority of no no-confidence", the greatest achievement of Togliatti's strategy for an organic agreement with the Christian Democratic Party to enable the communists to be in government. He was the architect the so-called "Euro-communism" project, an attempt to project in the West a reformism movement which would not entirely deny the communist experience.
7.    HISTORICAL COMPROMISE. Political project pursued in particular by Enrico Berlinguer, secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), based on the cooperation between communists and Catholics in government.
8.    CRAXI BETTINO. (Milan 1934). Italian politician. Socialist, MP since 1968. Appointed secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in 1976, he operated important changes in the party's profile, turning it into the core of a wide project of institutional and other reforms and of unity of the socialist forces.
9.    PANNUNZIO MARIO. (Lucca 1910 - Rome 1968). Italian journalist, liberal. Editor of the daily newspaper "Risorgimento Liberale" between 1943 and 1947, he then established (1949) the newsmagazine "Il Mondo", which he was editor of for seventeen years, making it into an unchallenged example of modern European journalism. Member of the Italian Liberal party, he was one of the founders of the Radical party, which he contributed to dissolving when the centre-left was formed.
10.    ROSSI ERNESTO. (Caserta 1897 - Rome 1967). Italian journalist and politician. Leader of "Giustizia e Libertà", in 1930 he was arrested by the fascist regime and remained in prison or exiled until the end of the war. Author, together with Spinelli, of the "Manifesto di Ventotene", and leader of the European Federalist Movement and of the battle for a united Europe. Among the founders of the Radical Party. Essayist and journalist, from "Il Mondo" he promoted vehement campaigns against clerical interference in political life, against economic trusts, industrial and agrarian protectionism, private and public concentrations of power, etc. His articles were collected in famous books "I padroni del vapore". After the dissolution of the Radical Party in 1962, and the consequent split from the editor of "Il Mondo", Pannunzio, founded "L'Astrolabio", whence he continued his polemics. In his last years he joined the "new" radical party, with which in 1967 he launched the "Anticlerical Year".
11.    ENI. National Hydrocarbons Corporation. Public enterprise established in 1953 to coordinate the Italian energy industry. With its subsidiary companies AGIP, SNAM, SAIPEM, ANIC, in 1980 it became the third largest European industrial group. Its presidents Enrico Mattei and Eugenio Cefis were involved in Italian politics, occasionally with roles that went beyond their functions.
12.    ONMI. Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia. State institute established at the time of fascism, for mother and child welfare. After the war and until its dissolution, it became the feud of the Christian Democratic Party implicated in scandals and involvement in party politics. In particular, this included the political and press campaign conducted by the Radical Party in the mid '60s on the corruption of the Roman section of the institute, which involved the then mayor of Rome Amerigo Petrucci.
13.    PETRUCCI AMERIGO. (Rome 1922). Mayor of Rome in 1964, arrested for administrative misdemeanors committed to create a public welfare network which was the source of the Christian Democratic Party's political funders. The allegations which sparked the trial were the result of a political and press campaign started by the Radical Party.
14.    LOTTA CONTINUA. One of the most important and widespread political movements of the extreme left, established in 1969 in Turin. In 1971 it created the homonymous newspaper, which became immediately popular. It detached the extra-parliamentary left from the trade union barons, penetrating the youth and students, the conscripts, the prisons, etc. Its chief leader was the journalist and writer Adriano Sofri.
15.    TOGLIATTI PALMIRO. (Genoa 1893 - Yalta 1964). In Turin he cooperated with A. Gramsci, among the founders of the Italian Communist Party, which he was secretary of from 1927 until his death. Exiled in Russia, he was member of the secretariat of the Comintern, and played an important role in Spain during the civil war. Back in Italy in 1944, he launched a "national" policy based on retention of the Lateran pacts, clashing with the secular forces of the country. Member of government from 1944 to 1947, also as minister.  After the elections of 1948, he monopolized the opposition's role, but he also favored a "dialogue" with the Christian Democrats and the Catholic world, without ever breaking with the Vatican. His project of an "Italian way to socialism" did not achieve its fundamental objective, and on the contrary led to a stalemate in the political system, preventing the left from providing an alternative in power to the Christian Democratic Party.
16.    INGRAO PIETRO. (Lenola 1915). For many years chief exponent of the Italian Communist Party. After militating in the fascist university organizations, leader of the party's "left", open to the so-called "dialogue with the Catholics" and to a grassroots conception of politics, perceived as struggle of the "masses" against capitalist exploitation on a world scale. President of the Assembly from 1976 to 1979, at the time of the "historical compromise" and of the "government of national unity".
17.    ANDREOTTI GIULIO. (Rome 1919). Exponent of the Christian Democratic Party. Secretary of A. De Gasperi, very young, as under-secretary of the Presidency of Cabinet, he began an uninterrupted career as minister: Interior (1954), Finance (1955-58), Treasury (1958-59), Defense (1959-66), Industry (1966-68), Budget (1974-76). Prime Minister from 1972 to 1973, then from 1976 to 1979 and from 1990 to 1993.
18.    MORO ALDO. (Maglie 1916 - Rome 1978). Italian politician. Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party (1959-65), mastermind of the centre-left policy. Several times minister as of 1956, Prime Minister (1963-68, 1974-76) president of the Christian Democratic Party as of 1956, he favored the participation of the Communist Party (PCI) in the government, outlining the hypothesis of a so-called "third stage" (after those of "centrism" and "centre-left") of the political system.  He was kidnapped by the Red Brigades on 16 March 1978 in Rome and found dead on 9 May of the same year.
19.    RED BRIGADES. (Known as BR). Clandestine terrorist organization of the extreme Left, born and operating in Italy as of 1969. By proclaiming the revolution of the working classes, the organization tried to open several fronts of armed revolt against the State and the political establishment, carrying out a series of bombings, wounding, kidnapping and assassination of politicians, journalists, magistrates and industrial executives. Its leader was Renato Curcio. In 1978 the organization kidnapped and assassinated Aldo Moro.
20.    MASI GIORGIANA. On 12 May 1977, in Rome, the police charged the thousands of participants in a nonviolent demonstration organized by the Radical Party, called to collect signatures on the "eight referenda" promoted on fundamental themes (abrogation of the Concordat, restrictive norms of the penal code, law on mental hospitals, public funding of parties, parliamentary committee of inquiry on offences committed by ministers, etc.). A young woman, Giorgiana Masi, was killed by gunshots, and other demonstrators were wounded. The Radical party showed pictures and tapes which show policemen shooting point-blank, and others which portray armed plainclothes policemen in the crowd, denouncing the deliberate attempt to cause a massacre.
21.    COSSIGA FRANCESCO. (Sassari 1928). President of the Italian Republic from 1985 to 1992. Deputy since 1958, under secretary (1966) and Minister (1974). Minister of the Interior (1976-78) when Aldo Moro was kidnapped.  He resigned when the body of the statesman was discovered. Prime Minister (1979-80). As President of the Republic, during the second part of his term he actively promoted changes in the Italian Constitution, participating in fierce controversies with the majority of political exponents, thereby breaking the limits laid down by the Constitution. For such reasons he was denounced by Marco Pannella in August 1991 for breach of the Constitution.
22.    REALE ORONZO. (Lecce 1902 - Rome 1988). One of the founders of the Partito d'Azione (1942), secretary of the Republican Party (1949-1964), Deputy Minister of Justice. The "Reale Act " is an emergency law which attributed special powers to the police forces, introduced by Reale to defeat terrorism (1975). In the referendum of 1988 promoted by the Radical Party to abrogate the "Reale Act", 76% of voters declared themselves in favor of maintaining the law.
23.    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.
24.    PERTINI SANDRO. (Stella 1896 - Rome 1990). Italian politician. Socialist, was imprisoned and exiled during the fascist regime. From 1943 to 1945 he participated in the Resistance. Secretary of the Socialist Party, deputy president of the Assembly (1968-1976), President of the Republic (1978-1985).
25.    SPADOLINI GIOVANNI. (Florence 1925). Italian historian and politician. Editor of "Il Resto del Carlino" (1955-68) and of "Il Corriere della Sera" (1968-72), Minister of Artistic Property (1974-76), secretary of the Italian Republican Party since 1979 and Prime Minister since 1981. President of the Senate.
26.    SCIASCIA LEONARDO. (Racalmuto 1921 - Palermo 1990). Writer, author of well-known novels ("Le parrocchie dor Regalpetr", 1956; "Il giorno della civetta" 1961; Todo modo, 1974), but also known as a polemist, he took active part in the Italian civil life for at least twenty years. During one legislature (1979-1983) he was radical Member of Parliament, actively intervening in civil rights campaigns (Tortora case, etc.).
27.    D'URSO GIOVANNI. Italian judge. Kidnapped by the Red Brigades on 12 December 1980. The kidnapping, which closely resembled that of Aldo Moro, stirred a vicious political and press controversy, during which some proposed the formation of an "emergency" government formed by technicians alone. The Radical Party played an important role – thanks also to the action of the writer Leonardo Sciascia – in obtaining the judge's release and in opposing any authoritarian solution. The judge was released on 15 December 1981.
28.    P2. Name of a Masonic lodge, whose members were covered by secrecy. Headed by Licio Gelli. Believed to be the organization which masterminded obscure authoritarian political schemes and created huge financial scandals. Dissolved in 1981 following a decision of the government. Its members all suffered a long political and social quarantine.
29.    VILLA BORGHESE - A public park in Rome.
30.    ROCCO ALFREDO. (Naples 1875 - Rome 1935). Jurist and politician. At first a radical, then joined the nationalists who then merged with the fascist party. Minister of Justice from 1925 to 1932, author of the penal code and of the codes of criminal procedure issued between 1930 and 1931. Despite the strong fascist inspiration, the two codes have remained intact for many years even after the fall of fascism, and have only very recently been replaced by more modern Codes. A figure of extraordinary importance in the institutional history of contemporary Italy.
31.    NEGRI TONI. (Padua 1933). Italian writer and philosopher, exponent of the trade unionist and revolutionary extreme left, was convicted as the architect of the assassination of Ing. Saronio.  He ran on the Radical Party ticket, provided he waived his parliamentary immunity and accepted the trial, and was elected Member of Parliament in 1983. He escaped his trial by fleeing clandestinely to France, where he currently lives.
32.    PICCOLI FLAMINIO. (Kirchbichl, Austria 1915). Italian politician. Secretary of the DC (1969; 1980-1982). Former president of the Assembly Foreign Affairs Committee.
33.    TORTORA ENZO. (Genoa 1928 - Milan 1988). Journalist and popular TV figure, arrested for alleged drug dealing. Elected member of the European Parliament (1984) on the Radical Party ticket, he underwent a trial during which he was convicted and later acquitted at the appeal. The occasion and the symbol of the most important radical campaign for the reform of the justice system.
34.    CSM – Judicial Service Commission.
35.    DE MITA CIRIACO. (Avellino 1928). Politician, Christian Democrat, deputy as of 1963. Minister on several occasions, secretary of the Christian Democratic Party in 1981 and Prime Minister in 1988, he was the protagonist of a vicious controversy with Craxi and the socialists and of attempts to "open" to the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Forced to resign by the conservative Christian Democrats, the so-called "dorotei", he became President of the DC. Leader of the left-wing of the DC.
36.    NATTA ALESSANDRO. (Imperia 1918). Exponent and deputy of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). He became secretary of the PCI after the death of Berlinguer, but left active politics after the "turnabout" carried out by the secretary Achille Occhetto who interrupted the continuity with Marxism and transformed the PCI into the PDS. He studied at the "Scuola Normale" of Pisa, in the cultural milieu of the time.
37.    FANFANI AMINTORE. (Arezzo 1908). Italian politician, professor of economic history, eminent personality of the Christian Democrat Party which he was secretary of from 1954 to 1959 and from 1973 to 1975. He gave a strong corporative impulse to the party with the use of public industry as a key element of economic development. Prime Minister (1958-'59; 1960-'62; 1982-'83), foreign minister on several occasions, president of the Senate from 1958 to 1973 and from 1976 to 1982.
38.    SPINELLI ALTIERO. ( Rome 1907 - 1982). Italian politician. During fascism, from 1929 to 1942, he was imprisoned as leader of the Italian Communist Youth. In 1942 co-author, with Ernesto Rossi, of the "Manifesto of Ventotene", which states that only a federal Europe can remove the return of fratricide wars in the European continent and give it back an international role. At the end of the war he founded, with Rossi, Eugenio Colorni and others, the European Federalist Movement. After the crisis of the European Defense Community (1956), he became member of the European Commission and followed the evolution of the Community structures. In 1979 he was elected member of the European Parliament on the ticket of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), becoming the directive mind in the realization of the draft treaty adopted by that parliament in 1984 and known as the "Spinelli Project".
39.    OCCHETTO ACHILLE. (Turin 1936). Italian politician. At first exponent of Ingrao's group, he then shifted to Berlinguer's centre. He became secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1988, succeeding Alessandro Natta. After launching the idea of a major "Constituent" of the left with all reformist forces, he then decided to change only the name of the party ("Democratic Party of the Left").
40.    AMICI DELLA TERRA - (Friends of the Earth), Italian environmentalist association.
41.    USL - Public health services.
42.    League North – Political Party which entered Parliament in April 1992. The League North was born out of the northern Italian regions of Lombardy and Emilia Romagna and seeks the secession of the prosperous Italian North from the rest of the country on the basis of the levels of corruption and inefficiency of the government in Rome not being reversible.  Its ideological and political leader is Umberto Bossi.
43.    SCALFARO OSCAR LUIGI. (Novara 1918). Italian politician, Christian Democrat. Lawyer, former minister of transport, minister of arts and culture, minister of the Interior. Man of great integrity, he enjoys the esteem of seculars as well.
44.    AMATO GIULIANO. (Turin 1938). Politician, expert in constitutional law. Extra-parliamentary by formation, later joined the Socialist Party. Member of Parliament during several legislatures, under-secretary of the Presidency of the Council during the two Craxi governments. Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Treasury during the first Goria government.
45.    MANI PULITE - Literally, "clean hands", an operation organized by part of the judiciary of Milan, consisting in investigating the ministers and politicians implicated in the scandal of the bribes.
46.    TOMAC ZDRAVKO - (1937). Former vice president of the Croatian government. He spoke for the first time at the Federal Council of the Radical Party in Rome from 19 to 22 September 1991. At the time the political situation of the former Yugoslavia was degenerating, exploding in conflicts and attacks which made it more and more evident that it was a civil war, which Europe refused to acknowledge as such. The federal council was summoned to discuss this terrible international crisis, which occurred immediately after the attempted coup in Moscow. The Radical Party invited him to participate so that he could publicly denounce the situation in his country in Italy, and he joined the Radical Party on the last day of the congress.
47.    NATHAN ERNESTO. (London 1845 - Rome 1921 - assumed Italian citizenship in 1888). Politician, at the beginning of the century he headed a secular and reformist coalition to conquer the local administration of Rome, until then controlled by exponents of land speculation linked to the most reactionary and clerical forces. As mayor of Rome (from 25 November 1907 to 4 December 1913) he achieved major social reforms of the Roman local administration. A Jew and member of the freemasonry, Nathan represented a never forgotten nightmare for Roman reactionary forces. In 1989 Marco Pannella launched a project called "Lista Nathan" for the administrative elections which he proposed to the secular forces of the left. The proposal was not accepted.

Chronology

-    1930.     Marco Pannella was born in Teramo, the son of Leonardo and Andrée Estachon.
-    1950.     National university delegate of the Liberal Party (PLI).  Two years later, he is President of the UGI (Unione Goliardica Italian, association of secular student forces). Three years later he is elected President of the UNURI (Unione Nazionale Rappresentativa Italiana, national association of university students). He graduated in Law at the University of Urbino.
-    1955. Among the founders of the Radical Party.
-    1959. On "Paese Sera", he proposes the alliances of all the parties of the left and hypothesizes a government with the participation of the PCI.
-    1960. Foreign correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he remains until 1963.
-    1963. Elected Secretary of the Radical Party. Founder and editor of "Agenzia Radicale".
-    1965. Beginning of the campaign for divorce. Creation of the "Italian League for Divorce".
-    1967. First Congress (but third in the historical sequence) of the new Radical Party in Bologna. The party was reconstructed on a platform of important reforms, anticlerical and antimilitarist activity and with a new statute-manifesto.
-    1968. Arrested in Sofia, where he was demonstrating to protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. First major Gandhian hunger strike, carried out together with several other nonviolent militants.
-    1973. Founder and editor of "Liberazione", which was published from 8 September 1973 to 28 March 1974.
-    1974. Referendum on divorce. Beginning of the campaign on abortion and for the liberalization of soft drugs.
-    1976. Elected at the Assembly in the districts of Turin and Rome, and chooses Turin. He is also elected at the municipal council of Rome and Genoa, and at the provincial council of Rome, but he prefers to concentrate on his activity as parliamentarian.
-    1978. At the conclusion of a campaign against the economic part of the Treaty of Osimo, he is elected at the municipal council of Trieste. The radical list obtains 6% of votes and brings about the election of the first non-Christian democratic mayor of the city.
-    1979. He is re-elected deputy in Naples and Milan. He chooses Naples. Elected at the European Parliament, where is he is constantly re-elected (1984, 1989).
-    1981. 25th (extraordinary) Congress of the Radical Party in Rome. The Preamble of the Statute is passed.
-    1983. Elected at the municipal council of Naples, project for the metropolitan area of the "Greater Naples". Re-elected deputy, chooses the municipality of Milan.
-    1987. At the Assembly this time he runs in Palermo. At the local government elections of Naples, the radical list gains twice as many seats and votes, and the radicals become part of the majority.
-    1988. In Catania and in Trieste, presentation of "Civic, secular and green lists". In Catania the list obtains five seats and is decisive for the election to mayor of the republican Enzo Bianco. Pannella is elected also in Trieste.
-    1989. Radical Party's Congress in Budapest. For the municipal elections in Rome, Pannella proposes a "Lista Nathan" (47), which is aborted because of the uncertainties of the PCI and of the secular parties. He then runs with the "Anti-prohibitionists on drugs against criminality" and is elected.
-    1991. Runs for the regional elections in Latium and in the Abruzzi in "Anti-prohibitionist, secular lists against criminality". Is elected in both regional councils. He is also elected at the municipal council of L'Aquila (but gives up) and in Teramo, in a civic list together with independent candidates and exponents of the PCI.
-    First issue of "The New Party", for the creation of the new Gandhian, secular, transnational, federalist, environmentalist party (or rather, the "transnational trans-party").
-    Proposal of three referenda, collection of signatures on the radical referenda and on the ones promoted by the COREL and the CORID.
-    Denounces the "unconstitutional" initiatives of President Cossiga to Parliament. The denunciation is examined by a special parliamentary committee.
-    A group of radical parliamentarians and militants, headed by Pannella, visits the Croatian cities of Osijek and Nova Gradiska for New Year's Eve; wearing the uniform of the Croatian army.
-    1992. 30 April-3 May, in Rome: first Session of the 36th Congress of the RP, with a vast participation of non-Italian political exponents.
-    Presentation of the "Lista Pannella" for the elections at the Assembly of 5 April. The list obtains 1,2% votes and 7 seats in Parliament.
-    In September, Pannella endorses the government of Giuliano Amato, on account of the country's economic crisis.
-    In October, the municipal council of Rome adopts the special bylaws for the autonomy of the 12th local district (Ostia), of which Pannella was president since August.
-    1993. 4-8 February. Second session of the 36th Congress, with the target of obtaining 30,000 subscriptions.

Selected Biography

-    A.Bandinelli, S.Pergameno, M.Teodori: "Libro bianco sul partito radicale e le altre organizzazioni della sinistra". Edizioni Radicali, 1987
-    P.Ignazi, A.Panebianco, M.Teodori: "I nuovi radicali". Mondadori, 1977 (useful bibliography)
-    "Referendum, ordine pubblico, Costituzione". Papers of the 1st Convention of the Radical Parliamentary Group, Florence 8/9 October 1977. Bompiani, 1978
-    "Il dettato costituzionale in tema di referendum. Funzioni e poteri della Corte di Cassazione. Le otto richieste radicali di referendum". Papers of the 2nd juridical symposium promoted by the radical parliamentary group, Rome 7/8 January 1978. Rome, 1978
-    "L'antagonista radicale". Papers of the Convention promoted by the radical Federal Council, Rome 1978. Stampa Alternativa, 1978
-    "Il parlamento nella Costituzione e nella realtá". Papers of the radical Parliamentary Group, Rome 20/21/22 October 1978. Giuffrè, 1979
-    "Tutela dell'onore e mezzi di comunicazione di massa". Papers of the juridical Symposium promoted by the Centro Calamandrei, Rome 24/26 November 1978. Feltrinelli, 1979
-    "Il pugno e la rosa. I radicali: gauchisti, qualunquisti, socialisti". Edited by V.Vecellio. Bertani, 1979
-    "Come sempre, meno liberi. Le leggi speciali sull'ordine pubblico, l'ostruzionismo radicale". Edited by V. Vecellio. Bertani, 1980
-    "La pelle del D'Urso". Edited by L. Jannuzzi, E. Capecelatro, F. Roccella and V. Vecellio. Radio Radicale Edit., 1981
-    "Marco Pannella: Scritti e discorsi 1959/1980". Gammalibri, 1982
-    Massimo Gusso: "Il partito radicale, organizzazione e leadership". CLEUP 1982 (vast bibliography)
-    Gigi Moncalvo: "Pannella, il potere della parola". Sperling & Kupfer, 1983
-    Angiolo Bandinelli: "Il radicale impunito. Diritti civili, nonviolenza, Europa". Stampa Alternativa, 1990
-    See also the collections of : "Agencia Radical" (as from 15 July 1963), replaced by "Radical News", news bulletins on the Radical Party, printed or duplicated ("Radical News" discontinued in 1989);
-    "La Prova Radicale" (1972/1973); "Liberazione" (editor Marco Pannella), initially a daily newspaper, 8 September 1973 - 28 March 1974; "La Prova Radicale" (periodical magazine, normally a supplement of Radical News, June 1976 - March 1977); "Argomenti Radicali" (1977/1979); "QR, Quaderni Radicali" (1977/1985); lastly, refer to the archives of Radio Radicale and of the Computer Conference System Agorà, both based in Rome. (edited by Angiolo Bandinelli)