We are all Franco Turigliatto!

Today, we are all Franco Turigliatto!

Franco’s expulsion appears to us to have been a choice dictated by the governing arrangement and the outcome of unconditional support to the Prodi government, which does not foresee or tolerate any form of dissent. It is a decision closely linked to the new left unity line Bertinotti launched in his recent interview in Liberazione, aiming for the formation of a governing left, by definition incompatible with any type of dissident element.

We believe that the current crisis the party is experiencing demonstrates the failure of the political line set forth at the last Congress, centred on a completely erroneous analysis of the relationship of social forces (do your remember “the wind is changing”?). This has come to the fore with the “non-victory” of the Union in the last elections, which has left us with a minority Government, holed up in the governing Palace, and not at all open to decision-making bodies of social movements. For this reason we call for the convening of an EXTRAORDINARY CONGRESS OF THE PRC which will acknowledge this failure and call upon the activists to discuss the party’s future.

We express our most absolute solidarity with Franco: our human and moral solidarity but above all our political solidarity. Therefore Critical Left is preparing to follow the political guidelines set forth in its declaration to the Senate, with a confidence in the government equivalent to external support and which has already determined to oppose the anti-popular and war measures of the Prodi government, starting with Afghanistan. From this day on, Critical Left will be actively involved, in society as in parliament, in building a left opposition to the Prodi Government and its 12 points. For this reason we reiterate our no, with no ifs and or buts, to new credits for the military mission in Afghanistan, to the TAV project [1], to any type of pension counter-reform, as we will continue to struggle, with the movement, against the doubling in size of the US base in Vicenza.

Thus, we will be more committed than ever before in the social movements and the struggle aiming to get back to the original spirit of the Social Forums; public arenas where different political and social forces can come to an agreement on common actions and platforms. For this reason, we intend to contribute to building genuine social opposition forums.

We are telling Rifondazione Comunista, the party which so many of us founded and built loyally throughout many years, that WE WILL DISOBEY ACTIVELY AND EN MASSE the decision taken, by not following the line of unconditional support to the government but practising another, the social opposition line. Therefore our disobedience entails the straightforward and determined construction of the Critical Left Association, a political instrument in the service of the social movements, which does not desert the anticapitalist left camp.