Convened with urgency, the VIIth Extraordinary Congress must decide on the PR's position with regard to the Italian elections. Already in 1968 the Radicals decided to cast blank ballots to emphasise their estrangement from a regime that guaranteed its own perpetuation by using substantially fraudulent electoral mechanisms that could only be utilised by political forces already constituted in the "union of the parties of the regime".

(The blank ballots on that occasion amounted, in fact, to more than a million, a testimony to the rebellious state of mind of the popular conscience.) The Congresses reaffirms that position and actually reinforces it in consideration of the "exclusive use" of the RAI-TV (national TV) by parties in Parliament and the refusal of access to any other expression of civil and political opinion. However it considers the possibility of exploring other attitudes, offering the PSI (Partito Socialista Italiano) outside support if this party, in consideration of the imminent decisive phase in the battle over divorce and other issues of general interest, will assume commitments and offer adequate guarantees of action. The PSI's reply will be affirmative and the PR will guarantee its outside support to the Socialists.

The VIIth Congress (extraordinary) of the Radical Party meeting in Rome on May 9, 10 , 1970, approves the deliberations with which the National Headquarters denounced the exclusive right of the parties represented in Parliament to the use of the RAI-TV - a fact which accentuates their ever-growing tendency to assert themselves as a "regime syndicate"; notes that such an inadmissible and unconstitutional use of TV is of a kind to falsify the electoral process by precluding the possibility of any group not participating in the current political equilibrium to communicate to the people its own programs and political proposals;

decides, therefore, not to present itself in the lists for the June 7 elections nor to present Radical candidates in the other lists. In both cases presenting oneself would be the equivalent of aiding and complying with the forces that are responsible for having reduced the democratic system to a mere formality;

establishes, consequently, that for the Radicals the only possibility for a democratic fight against this situation lies in casting a blank ballot. This act must not be understood as an anti-electoral or anti-parliamentarian position, but as the expression of a democratic principle that is not a mere cover for the regime and the refusal to delegate any electoral proxy to the present political array.

The Congress of the Radical Party, nevertheless:

aware of its own role in the anti-authoritarian, anti-clerical and anti-militarist battles which it is waging in the country; considering the particular responsibility of the PSI in the present political situation with regard to divorce and to civil rights, and the adhesion of 35 members of Parliament the aforementioned party to the Radical's initiative for a referendum to abrogate the Concordat,

gives a mandate to the party's National Secretary to ask the PSI for official and precise guarantees, particularly in regard to:

- first of all, the rapid approvation of the divorce law;

- the development of the battle against the Concordat;

- the democratisation of the public information media whose present utilisation nullifies and corrupts the constitutional and civil rights of the citizens and impedes effective democratic processes;

- to solicit a parliamentary debate and the approvation of a law for conscientious objectors.

Only in this case, and if the reply of the PSI is forthcoming before May 15, will the National Secretary be able to change the decision (upon ratification by the National Headquarters) of this Congress to cast blank ballots and, instead, to participate in the electoral campaign because of these issues.