In Pannella's room Rutelli appears: «Excuse me, Marco, can I? They have postponed ». "Postponed what?" "The appointment of the undersecretary." "Yet? But what are they waiting for? ». And the radical head spreads his arms, more annoyed than dejected. Then he turns to me, as if to justify his brief abandonment to annoyance and, if anything, to point out that he does not think of himself, of the office, but of those who should be the beneficiaries of the law: "Every day that passes, someone there dies. And we waste time. When will they understand that a man's life is not a bureaucratic practice? " Pannella loosens the knot of his tie, unfastens his collar and swallows, directly from the bottle, a long sip of water: exaggeratedly slow gestures, it seems that he needs it to find calm. And instead he bursts out another time: "I said it and I repeat it. If they don't hurry up, I'll withdraw the candidacy. I swear. "
Forgive, Pannella, but who made you do it to offer it?
«It was a must, for once. Although it cost me effort, a lot of effort. It is a tremendous task, I declare it without emphasis. The law is on the line, albeit degraded, that we are managing to impose not only in Italy, but also in Europe and in the Third World. Then I said to myself that we could not be unavailable to ensure the execution of the provision, to seize the objective: to lower the mortality rates in countries where hunger is murderous. Certainly, applying to be the thousandth undersecretary of this Republic at age 55, 40 of which of honorable civil career, required courage and a bit of humility ».
Is it tactical, or is it true that if they don't do it quickly, a matter of hours, she withdraws? If yours were a timed availability, don't you think it would be little appreciated by those who, like you say, die of hunger?
"Of the two, the one: either it is correct what we have managed to convince our government, which in Brussels at the European summit has forced the Community of Ten to move in time, because in a hundred days a catastrophe will begin without unprecedented Africa, and then it is not possible to continue to lose days and weeks (it is from 29 March that they must designate the undersecretary); or it is not. But if it is, you have to be very clear. We are in a case in which the partitocratic reflexes cannot have a free field, otherwise it starts badly, and it is useless to create illusions about what can actually be done ».
If he is called to administer the funds, he will have to collaborate, if not depend, on the minister, who is Andreotti. A unique perspective for a radical.
«In relation to Andreotti I have always had great esteem as well as great reasons for political confrontation. And I have reason to believe that his state of mind towards me is not different. An eventual collaboration, limited and punctual, could prove to be precious, both as a personal experience and for the country ».
If you enter the government, how will the PR stand in opposition? Will he also oppose Pannella or will he adopt the ancient formula of "two weights and two measures"?
"The government will continue its policy without being conditioned by my presence as the fifty-fifth under-secretary; Pannella's policy, and even more so that of my party, cannot be called into question. No double track, therefore, but a growth of responsibility from which it cannot fail to be an extra opportunity for truly secular and democratic dialogue ".
The PSDI is in favor of you as a commissioner. And also the PSI, after the declarations of Loris Fortuna. And the others? I mean, how likely is he to make it?
"What are their chances of making it, not me." I'm not unemployed ».
Let's say that the appointment arrives, what will be your first step?
"The only serious thing to do is immediately try to set up a shack that can hold up the flood of things to do. This is the eye of needle through which the Great Hope must pass. As always I will have the profound sense of urgency, the refusal to give in to haste ».
And then how do you plan to spend that money?
"First of all, whether it is me or someone else, you will have to take care not to spend it. Indeed, not to squander them. In any case, not in support of our businesses, perhaps shameful and unmentionable; not in support of corrupt classes and people; not in food aid especially ".
But then where will the billions end up?
"Don't pretend not to know. Radicals for at least five years illustrate every day how they should be administered. We will refer to those indications, constitute a solid program of intervention: we cannot now make accounting lists, it would take half a day and a half newspaper ".
La Malfa has objected that there are too many 1,900 billion for a country like Italy that has a budget that is at least as bad as Africa. And many give him reason.
"I hope he did not actually utter such a demagogic truth. We were the only ones, unfortunately, to denounce that thousands of billions in the past years had been thrown away, that is without results neither for Italy, nor for the millions of agonizing. To those who think this way, we answer however that this law is born to intervene differently. The real serious problem, very serious, urgent, is that of converting the thousands of billions destined for crazy "military investments" into life and peace expenses.
There are those who, like Montanelli, have written that aid to poor countries is of no use because they never reach their destination: foodstuffs that rot on the street, robberies, and so on. What do you suggest to prevent the smart ones from being favored instead of the poor?
"The problem from this point of view is no different than in Naples or Palermo or Reggio Calabria and, in some cases, in Milan or Turin. The only recipe is that of good governance. For which it is necessary to have "clean hands and a crystal heart", as Francesco De Gregori sings ".
Others are convinced that if one dies of hunger, rather than giving him a fish it is better to teach him to fish it. It doesn't seem like a stupid idea.
"In the beginning, about 20 years ago, this Mao maxim was interesting. Now, whenever I hear it, I think there must be some industry behind that produces hooks, lines and fishing rods. Because if there is no fish, neither water nor the fisherman's apprentice, which is agonizing, all the paraphernalia, including the manual for catching the sole, can serve at best as an ornament for some tomb ».
In the missionary magazine Nigrizia, an article by Father Alessandro Zanotelli denounced that the money of the hungry often ends up in the pockets of friends, experts, researchers and various professors. Is that so?
"That article appeared on the front pages of the Unit and of La Repubblica only because an attempt was being made to prevent a dangerous law for the Soviet Union and for thieves from going through. We share much of what Nigrizia wrote: and the Radical Party was the only party to publish a white paper on certain distortions. It is not by chance that we repeat that, starting, we must rely above all on the small army of Christian and lay Catholic missionaries, who work by giving life literally to the struggle for the salvation of humanity from this unclean holocaust ".
30 million would be the ones who risk the end. Aren't there too many for Pannella?
"If the figure has been reduced to 30 million instead of 50, as the UN agencies declared, this is due to the study of the radicals. But this is a reduction on paper. With the means of the law, which are half of those required by the Piccoli proposal, I am sure that within two years it can guarantee the survival of over a million people ".
She claims that if they let Pertini do the malnutrition problem, it would be a bad memory. Do you want to explain?
"In truth it is a phrase I said both to Pertini and to John Paul II, because it is simply a question of having political and human will to conceive certain choices and to pursue their goals. The expression is perhaps a whip, but in a world in which thousands of billions of lire of military equipment are wasted, and for the exploration, always for military purposes, of spaces and stars, not finding money to block the advance of the desert, which threatens to overwhelm us with its growth, is madness ".
Do you agree with the Pope. Your commitment against hunger unites you, or does Pannella resent his past, when he was a supporter of Catholic groups at a very young age, as his biographers recall?
«I enrolled in December 1945, at the age of 15, in the Liberal Party of Marco Pannunzio and Benedetto Croce. Until 1953, when I left permanently, I entered and left the PLI following the undulating movement of my "elders" engaged in the liberal left. The last contact I had with the institutional world of the Church was the first communion, in June 1940. Having said this, and claiming for myself the anticlerical intransigence, which I suppose is proper of every religious spirit, I think we cannot not tell ourselves Christians and even Catholics, if we have grown up in this country where the many Catholic cultures constitute the entire universe of knowledge and religiosity for more than a millennium. I repeat, moreover, that in the face of extermination for lack of food, if I were to enroll today in "this" State or "this" Church, I would choose to enroll in "this" Church. Of course it's a boutade. But as in any authentic boutade, there is certainly much of "my" true ".
The critics of the radicals insinuate that that of the desperate people of Africa is your electoral workhorse, even if at the administrative offices you have no own lists.
"Be assured that if this struggle of integral Christian and secular humanism had been paying in terms of worldly success and power, there would have been no monopoly for so long. Third-world hunger deaths are not voters ».
Among its usual targets, the PCI stands out in recent times. Because?
«Because today is the true State in the State, the only one that remains. Fortunately for them, the Church and the clerical world are no longer so. Because the PCI is an immense structure even of a parastate that has its own fierce logic of self-preservation. Because it is the only one that can still deceive large masses. Because it started primarily with power, a pillar of party politics. Not by chance on the front of the fight against the extermination of the disinherited his contribution was only negative, and he dismantled the splendid momentum of the "communist people" which, also through numerous mayors, was giving a lot, organizing prestigious international events ".
We come to the elections. Why are you with the "Greens"? Do you fear they eat the rose?
"We are" green "too, always. And we consider it necessary for democracy that the "greens" of a different itinerary from ours also constitute themselves in an autonomous political force. Because the pollution of politics and morals in Italy is at least equal, if not more serious, than that of the environment. And right now we urge the presence of lists of this kind also in the political elections. If we were not able to propose for the overcoming of party politics, even a system of new and different parties, our struggle for a democratic regime that was "perfect" in the West could never be realized ".
Contacts are intensified between PR and PSI to find, apparently, points of agreement. Loris Fortuna, I use his own words, wants to "define a socialist and radical operational area up to the hypothesis of a federative and associative structure". In addition to asking you if you agree, I must confess that I didn't understand anything. Would you like to clarify it?
«There are two miracles in Italian and European politics. One is from the PSI, which not just over ten percent, expresses the President of the Republic, and the President of the Council, mayors, presidents of regions, banks, the USL and so on. The other and of the Radical Party, which with less than three thousand members, has been punctually for 20 years a majority in major battles for civil rights; and many Third World heads of state consider him the most authentic representative of Europe. We have traveled opposite paths; that of the attempt to convert power with power; us to convert politics into democratic politics of values, ideals and hopes. But the roots are common. As, on the other hand, they are common with the PRI, the PLI, the PSDI, the liberal Catholics and the communists of the Terracini and Gullo tradition. Together, we have already harvested some fruits. But those who are convinced, like us, that democracy can live only by looking at the simplicity of Anglo-Saxon democracies, with large programmatic parties of the same civilization, cannot fail to note the goodness of Fortuna's indications. Which are then the same ones inscribed in the radical compass. In other words, it is a matter of aggregating similar forces on the facts ».
But could Pannella, as undersecretary, be interpreted as a first step towards the realization of the Fortuna hypothesis?
"If anything I would pay homage to a responsible democratic step of the government parties, which in general, instead, are partitocratic".
You have once asked for the PSI card, but it does not seem to me that you have received enthusiastic reception.
"Not once, but twice. I imagine to be the only Italian since 1945 to whom this treatment has been – understandably – reserved. I must admit, however, that for us the double militancy, against the Church-parties, is an almost necessary objective ".
On the Newspaper I read his proposal not to vote to bring down the referendum, according to constitutional rules. But for practical purposes, what's the difference between not voting and voting no? The important thing is not that the yeses do not win?
"Exact. In order for the yeses not to win, it is necessary that all those who are not only a party, who are hostile to the referendum request, or consider it not worthy of their own interest, are computable. I mean, they do it together. Now, if we accept the value of this referendum, and we go to the polling place, we separate and cancel that 25/30 percent of citizens who will certainly not go to the polls on this occasion. The Constitution for this type of consultation has explicitly foreseen the possibility of a rejection of the majority of citizens, establishing that if 50 percent of the valid suffrage of the rightholders is not reached, the vote is null. Consequently our position remains the same as always: the referendum must be held. And many believe (the party has not yet expressed) that this time the use of the ballot boxes is not worth the endorsement of a card, but requires the condemnation of a preventive refusal. Ignoring the call it is impossible not to win, because it is impossible that the sum of the autonomous abstentions and those of the voters, the DC, the PSI, the PRI, the PSDI, the PLI and the PR, plus those of the UIL, the CISL and the socialist component of the CGIL is not far greater than 50 percent. I repeat: the referendum must be held. And it will be for the policy of the PCI summit, what was the clash over divorce, in 1974, for the DC and the clerical world: a historical lesson to the advantage also of the losers ».
But why do you want PCI to lose count even on the escalator?
"Because the PCI itself spoke of the referendum as a disaster. Because for a year the scarecrow served to distract Italian politics from the real question: the reform of labor costs. And because a positive outcome for the communists could not be supported by our economy. And the PCI knows this very well ».
by Vittorio Feltri
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