France 24
Saturday 28 February 2009
AFP - Basque separatist group ETA criticised this weekend's elections in the region as undemocratic and told supporters to return blank ballots, amid fears it could stage new attacks to coincide with the poll.
The regional parliament that will result from these "anti-democratic elections" will be a "fascist parliament," ETA said in a statement released by the pro-independence Basque newspaper Gara Friday.
"For those in favour of independence, of sovereignty, the only vote is blank," it said.
The group also denounced the "apartheid policy" in Spain's northern Basque Country, where pro-independence parties are banned from Sunday's regional election due to their links to ETA and its outlawed political wing Batasuna.
Radical Basque separatist parties draw support from approximately 10 percent of Spain's Basque voters.
ETA has been blamed for the deaths of 825 people in a four-decade campaign for an independent Basque homeland straddling northern Spain and part of southwestern France.
Hours after the Supreme Court banned two pro-independence parties this month, ETA responded with its first attack in the Spanish capital since December 2006, setting off a van packed with explosives in a business district. The blast caused extensive damage but no injuries.
The decision also provoked violent protests by radical Basque leftists in the Basque city of Bilbao.
Last week, another ETA bomb exploded outside the headquarters of the Basque Socialist Party in the town of Lazkao, causing major damage but no injuries.
The bombings raised fears that the regional elections could be marred by further ETA attacks.
The Basque interior ministry said it plans to deploy 5,000 police throughout the region, or more than half of its entire force of 8,000, on election day.
Around 1.78 million people are eligible to vote in Sunday's elections to the 75-seat regional parliament.
Polls show the moderate centre-right Basque Nationalist Party is at risk of losing its nearly 30-year hold on power in the region to the Basque Socialist Party.
The PNV is led by the head of the regional government, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, whose plans for referendums on self-determination were rejected by the Madrid government.
If they win, the Socialists are hope to boost the already substantial autonomy enjoyed by the region.
A Socialist government "must rid itself of any sort separatist temptations," Basque Socialist deputy Jose Maria Benegas told AFP.
Elections are also being held in the rugged northwestern Galicia region, with polls indicating the ruling Socialists could be re-elected with a slightly increased majority over the centre-right Popular Party.
For Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the polls are a chance to gauge his support as the country reels from an economic crisis and Basque separatist violence.
The polls will be the first since national elections in March 2008, in which Zapatero was re-elected for a second four-year term.
In his first term, Zapatero had made resolving the Basque problem one of his priorities.
But negotiations with the armed Basque separatist organisation ETA failed, and the group resumed its attacks.
7 comments:
It seems that the terribly made movie "El Lobo" does have one good point: as long as ETA uses violence as its tactic, it can be used against them politically, in that ETA is pegged as unnegotiable and too extreme to be given political clout (through recognition of the group's credibility). But what seems wrong here is if the government rejects the closest thing to a civil and negotiable form of the pro-independence cause - the political party. 'Tis anti-democratic to determine which groups are able to represent themselves in the political circle (depending on what kind of democracy you're going for). However, the question seems to be, can we limit who and what causes can be represented? America's had its fair share of affairs with this dilemma: the Communist cause and the red scare, neo-Nazi parties, do you think the Muslim Brotherhood could exist as a political entity in the States, how about if all those British pedophiles hopped the Atlantic to get some rights?
I'm not saying ETA are on the same level playing field as pedophiles, but the Spanish governments reject ETA for its use of terrorism - that is why they are banned from obtaining seats, because they do not recognize the rights of other men by placing them in danger. How does it look if a government accepts a group that actively terrorizes the nation for its cause? The change needs to come from within ETA - not it's cause, but its way of getting there. If they were to stop terrorizing (especially in the wake of an ultimatum), ETA would have to be given recognition as a political entity, and its cause can become more negotiable. Though, it seems the radicals of ETA wield weapons in the belief that there can be no negotiations, that this is the only way to negotiate and represent ourselves. We should then turn to the Civil Rights movement in the US and its split sects of same cause, but different paths of reaching it: Martin Luther King Jr. vs. Malcolm X and his Black Panthers, and think about who got further.
ETA holds the Basque country at mercy. We are often in favor of those groups who fight for independence. History views them as victims desperate to shed the control of their colonizers. But who are the good guys if the ETA is holding back the Basques from free elections? And if the socialists are thought to increase autonomy in the region than why are the ETA still committing violent acts? The ETA is no longer a progressive movement promoting change but a terrorist group with holding progress.
I'm not sure what the ETA wants anymore? It almost seems like they are fighting for nothing. In many ways the Basque country in northern Spain is autonomous from the state in certain facets. The ETA is preventing the Basque people from participating in free elections. It seems that they are only hurting themselves. It seems that their efforts are futile.
Im not sure what ETA is fighting for either, moreover, Im not even sure if ETA knows what ETA is fighting for. Is it a matter of pride or of freedom?
I agree with the idea that the only way that ETA can be a politically legitimate entity would be for it to begin to use politically legitimate tactics to achieve its goals. And I also agree that much of ETA's actions are not even genuinely in search of real progress in terms of Basque independence. The problem of expecting reform within ETA is that ETA itself is a fringe extremist movement of Basque nationalism--in essence, the least moderate of those in favor of Basque nationalism. Perhaps if other elements of the movement were to come out with more extreme condemnation of ETA's actions, it might encourage pressure within the Basque independence movement for ETA to back off. The fact that polls showed that Basque Nationalist Party was posed to lose the elections is evidence that people of the Basque region are not with ETA and their scare tactics.
I agree with Amrit, that ETA cannot be a political entity if it does not use political tactics and resorts to violence to prove their point. I don't think ETA knows what they are fighting for anymore either. The Basque Country is an autonomous community, and even the Socialists are working to increase autonomy in the region. So what is ETA really fighting for? It is clear that they are not going to get independence because not only do they not have enough supporters, but they are using violence in order to prove their point, rather than strategic political tactics. I don't understand why ETA continues to commit violent acts when it is not getting them anywhere. They are only building up an image as a terrorist group, which is not going to give them any political support. I think it is obvious that what they are fighting for has become a useless cause because, honestly, they would not survive as an independent country and they do not even have enough support to actually make any progress. I think it has come down to ETA as being a terrorist group that is proud of what they believe in rather than really fighting for independence.
It seems that we are all in agreement: that if ETA wants any kind of legitmacy, any kind of actual political recognition, the violence must stop. And who is to say that if the Basque country was an indenpendation nation from Spain that the ETA leaders wouldn't want complete control over the region, creating an entirely new dictatorship? They seem exactly like the type of group that would want that type of thing. Would they be willing, these terrorists who have killed hundreds of innocents, to be a demoractic nation, with free elections and so forth? Not all Basques want to be independent from the rest of Spain; some enjoy their autonomous regional freedoms and wish to remain attached to Spain. The fact that the PNV might lose to the Socialists is enough evidence of this. ETA is an organzation made up a of a very small percentage of the actual Basque population and is an extremist left group that uses fear and terror to control the outcomes of situations. Why make them thiink they have any kind of right to control the citizen's freedom to vote whichever way they want? Isn't that anti-democratic?
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