FROM THE WORLD TO THE BASQUE COUNTRY
|
|
2007/V/30
EHNews periodical information on the Basque Country
16th May 07-19th May 07
"Imaz's proposal is a principal way to prolong conflict" 16/05/07A short deliberation was enough for the Court Room 61 to erase ASB 17/05/07"The PSOE assumed the political character of the conflict in 25 meetings with Batasuna before truce was called 18/05/07Conde-Pumpido: "We possibly went too far, but got away with it"18/05/07
"Only 20% of the Basques reject the political negotiation with the Basque pro-independence left 19/05/07
"Imaz's proposal is a principal way to prolong conflict" 16/05/07The proposal sent "by the PNV of Imaz and Urkullu" towards the creation of a new "antiterrorist pact" with the PSOE and the PP constitutes, for the Basque pro-independence left, "an absolutely irresponsible" conduct because it is "a principal way to bury the process and to prolong the conflict". Joseba Permach added that, behind the PNV's position, hides its will "to continue profiting from its particular businesses".
The Basque pro-independence left is conscious that to approach this "historical opportunity" is mostly PSOE's responsibility, "as it is governing the Spanish State". In the Basque pro-independence left view, it is evident that since ETA called the permanent cease-fire the party leaded by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has not taken steps "in the good direction", but rather in the opposite one. The last example, the cancellation of candidacies: "Nobody can understand how leaving a key political formation such as the Basque pro-independence left outside the elections can be a positive contribution towards a democratic process".
Joseba Permach warned, however, that the PSOE could not have made last months' decitions if it did not count "on the loyal and permanent support of the PNV, that does the dirty work for him". A party, denounced, "that as has historically done places in front its own interests and those of the Spanish State to the interests of this Country, to the interests of a national process, to the interests of a democratic process and a peace process".
And now that, "the pro-independence left has put upon the table a proposal to relaunch the process and to obtain a political agreement that will bring to this country a democratic scene, a of democratic framework proposal, a proposal for the creation of a statute that gathers the four provinces' of the south of the Basque Country right to decide", the PNV "is not only is able to reject a proposal that no abertzale nor democrat with the desire to get to the root of the conflict would refuse, but it also forwards a new antiterrorist agreement to the PP and the PSOE in order to refuse a resolution, in order to reject a democratic process, to say not to a democratic framework, to say not to peace, and to enlarge the conflict and repression".
Catalunya embodies the Basque pro-independence left commitment
More than fifty people, representing a hundred organizations that conform citizen's initiative "Sí al Procés de Pau" (Yes to the peace process), concentrated yesterday before Barcelona's City council to denounce that "the Law of Parties will determine again the result of the elections, falsifying the political map of the Basque Country".
The manifesto read by August Gil Matamala, an important member of the Comissió de Defensa of the Collegi d'Advocats of Barcelona denounced that "this way, the city councils will not be really representative. The most fundamental rights are rejected to a part of the Basque society; without those rights there will never be democracy, have been slanted with the only purpose of silencing a fundamental voice for the resolution of the conflict", also underlined the perverse concept of "the contamination", directly denouncing that "this is a concept outside a constitutional ordering of democratic will".
Among the all well-known faces supporting the demo there where the lawyer Gemma Calvet, the chairperson of the Comissió de Defensa of the Collegi d'Advocats, Jaume Asens, and the deputy and spokesperson of the parliamentarian group of ERC, Anna Simó. The demo also counted with the support of the Euskal Etxea of Barcelona and Espaço Galego as well as the trade unions CGT and IAC.
The reading of the text was accompanied of an action in which several people, in white jumpsuits and "anti-contamination" masks, stuck posters with slogans such as "Alert, democracy contaminated" and "Not to the illegalisation".
A short deliberation was enough for the Court Room 61 to erase ASB 17/05/07At an unusual speed of hardly two hours of public hearing and little more of deliberation, the 16 magistrates who compose the Room 61 of the Supreme Court decided to prohibit the inscription of Abertzale Sozialisten Batasuna (Pro-independence socialist unity) in the Registry of Political Parties. The lawyers of the formation Basque pro-independence left, Iñigo Iruin and Adolfo Araiz, besides raising the unconstitutionality of the Home Ministry's performance, also emphasized that ASB's statutes fulfil what stated in the Law of Parties.
Iruin also emphasized that the political parties' function is to agglutinate the people who share a same ideology, so it can not be persecuted, and after mentioning several sentences of the European Court of Human rights that maintained his plea, indicated that if the purpose is to clarify if the new party is the succession of a banned one, it is impossible to do it as it is not even enrolled and can be imputed no activity.
Araiz, on the other hand, detailed that the word Batasuna, included in abbreviations ASB and, that is one of the "arguments" adduced by the Public Prosecutor Office and Advocates office to maintain their demands, it is not exclusive of any political party, mentioning several formations that have it included in their denomination.
This argument, nevertheless, frontally confronts with what exposed the General State Prosecutor, Conde-Pumpido, who in January of 2006 literally affirmed that the illegalization of a party "nothing would prevent that the same people who integrated a suspended or dissolved party they could constitute a new political formation". It seems that in about a year the criterion of the Public Prosecutor Office has changed 180 degrees.
The Spanish High Court only presented the rulling. The sentence with the consequent arguments not to register ASB in the Registry of Political Parties will not be made public until next week.
Joseba Alvarez: "The Spanish Government has kicked the process"
Joseba Alvarez, who appeared in a press-conference with the member of Batasuna's national executive Marije Fullaondo, assured that "what we have lived during this campaign, such as the illegalization of 380 candidacies, demonstrate that the Spanish Government, at the present time, has kicked the process".
The Basque pro-independence leader also talked about the Spanish president's, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, visit to Gasteiz last Tuesday. Remembered that Zapatero "even greeted the Irish resolution and the parts involved", and emphasize that "the Basque pro-independence left is ready, with no minimum doubt, to make the process that in the Irish case has carried out Sinn Féin". "The problem is if Mr. Zapatero is ready to do what Mr. Tony Blair has done".
Finally, Joseba Alvarez remembered that from the 28 of May, after the municipal and leasehold elections in Araba, Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Nafarroa, "a scene to resolve the conflict in the Basque Country will begin, that it will also demand to go through the different phases" by. In that sense, it emphasized that in spite of the "undemocratic character" measures, the Basque pro-independence left bids for "a resolution to this country, although this is only possible if the PSOE and the PNV enter one of these routes".
The PSOE assumed the political character of the conflict in 25 meetings with Batasuna before the truce was called 18/05/07The decision to maintain the illegalization before the next electoral appointment has been received by the Basque pro-independence left as a third "no" to its political agreement proposal that would definitively resolve the conflict -the recognition of the Basque Country, the right to decide and territoriality. First one a few months ago by the PNV and PSOE interlocutors in the three bands conversations to celebrated in Loiola; the second expressed with the facts instead of words, after the public presentation of the "autonomy to four" proposal with the right to decide; and the veto to ASB's inscription as a new party, as well as AS's lists and to part of ANV's.
The embryo of this process arose at the end of 1999, and the meetings developed uninterruptedly from 2001 to accelerate themselves as of 2004. To such an extent that before ETA's cease-fire in March 2006 both parts had crossed views and proposals in araund 25 occasions, that is about a bimonthly regularity.
"Political Conflict"
In accordance with the already well-known information, the talks between the PSOE and Batasuna in this first stage previous to the cease-fire can be divided in three moments. One of them is merely preliminary and affects the beginning of the contacts, but it also has a point of interest since it was the then leader of the PSE, Nicolas Redondo.
In 2001, a PSOE delegation led by Eguiguren met Otegi again. They are times of pure and hard conflict. With an added difficulty: the PP continues governing in Madrid with an ample majority and the PSOE itself and has just signed along with Aznar an anti-abertzale pact.
The "bases for an adjustment"
These "bases", published in 2003, include affirmations that can in time be read in the Basque pro-independence left proposals. Thus, the first point pleads for "the recognition that all the political options must have the mechanisms and possibilities to take into practice their democratic objectives".
Details a side, the undeniable issue of Eguiguren bases are the bottom idea of the necessity of a political solution -an "adjustment" according to its terminology. This conception was brought to the conversations with the Basque pro-independence left, from the mutual commitment of 2002 to 2004.
The "foundations"
With the triumph of the PSOE in government the opportunity to have an opportunity began to be real. In November, eight months after the arrival of Zapatero, the Basque pro-independence left jammed the sports hall of Anoeta to explain a new procedure based on two negotiation boards: one formed by ETA and the Spanish Government, and another one composed by parties and socio-political agents to reach the pending political agreement.
In January 2005, with a new political climate evident at all the levels - including ETA's cease-fire or the Congress resolution impelled by the PSOE that endorsed the dialogue with the armed organization, at the end of year both parts brought to light the existence of talks, without hiding the objective to look for a political resolution instead of a military or "technique" one.
The president of the PSE, Jesus Eguiguren, did not hide the political character of the opened process. "These are the first steps of a change in the Basque Country and we are finally going to enter the land of the coexistence, of the political consensuses, and where the nightmare we have lived will be a thing of the past". The appeal to the search of "consensuses", accepted at that time almost unanimously, went in coherence with the idea of the board of parties. And also with ETA's declaration, that located the cease-fire as an initiative to facilitate a democratic process.
January 2006: The conversations between the PSOE and the Basque pro-independence left in this previous phase to the cease-fire had been around an agenda of five points: analysis of passed experiences, international analysis, diagnosis of the Basque situation, key issues for the agreement and proposals for the agreement. In the case of the PNV, the conversations were destined to speak about the future, not about the past in which the Basque pro-independence left and the PNV had never and still do not agree on.
Also in January 2006, when the meetings already where public and had reached certain maturity, the Basque pro-independence left tried to give to shape the process putting a debate script on the table. It is a political script for a political solution to a political conflict. Neither PSOE nor PNV would put any obstacle to it. Although the debate did not advance as much as it was desired, the questions approached to reach at a decisive process seem to be very clear. This one is the complete content of the script forwarded by Otegi:
Introduction
- The verification of the existence of the conflict.
- The Political Character of thecomflict.
- Its Historical Nature.
- Definition of the Basque Country as the geographic area of the conflict.
- To Bid for Peace and the resolution of the conflict.
- Commitment with the democratic dialogue as the only tool for its overcoming.
- To Bid to build a democratic and peace scene agreed from our political responsibility.
Principles of dialogue
- Principle of no exclusion in the resolutive dialogue.
- Principle to approach all the roots of the conflict and to look for its overcoming in an agreed and democratic way.
- Principle of respect to the will freely expressed by the Basque Country. Principle of self-determination.
- Principle of which this exercise will be carried out as agreed by the political agents of the Basque Country.
Commitments of dialogue
- Commitment of using pacific and democratic routes for the overcoming of our legitimate differences during the process of decisive dialogue.
- Commitment of defending all the rights for all the citizens of the Basque Country.
- Commitments of which the hypothetical agreements that are reached will take into account the plurality and the history of the Basque Country.
- Commitment of which the hypothetical agreements will necessarily count on with the adhesion and respect of the different political traditions that are found in the Basque pluralism.
Objective of political dialogue
- To construct a democratic scene that effectively guarantees the respect to all the rights of all the people in the Basque Country.
- To build the democratic conditions and the agreed game rules will allow, through the use of exclusively democratic methods, the materialization of all the political projects without more limitations than those of the respect to the popular will.
- To establish the conditions in which the Basque Town Country will exert the right to free determination.
- To decide the conditions for this democratic exercise.
On the resolution dialogue board
- We decided the creation a table of multilateral dialogue.
- The table will have as central nucleus the political parties with stable functioning in all or some of the territories of the Basque Country.
- The "real representation" and weighing of the mentioned parties will be taken into account.
- A board for the set of the Basque Country will be constituted.
- The agreed guarantees for the participation of the Basque social and trade union organizations in the process of decisive dialogue must be established.
On the decision making
- The decisions will be adopted under the general criterion of "sufficient" majorities.
- These majorities will not be able to be fixed if the two existing sensitivities or political traditions do not participate in the decisive dialogue.
- This condition could not be exercised as a permanent tool for the blockade or veto of possible agreements.
On the popular consultation
- Any hypothetical agreement that can be reached will have to be put under the popular referendum so that the Basque citizenship ratifies or rectifies this agreement.
- The hypothetical agreements will have to be ratified by those who subscribe them.
- The agreements will have to be negotiated with the states.
- For this negotiation the necessary national interlocution between the parties that subscribe the agreement will be agreed in order to approach the negotiation process with the Spanish State.
International presence
- The decisive political dialogue will count on with the presence of organisms and personalities of international character.
- This presence will guarantee both in technical and political terms the good development of the decisive dialogue process.
Conde-Pumpido: "We possibly went too far, but got away with it" 18/05/07Six days after the Spanish Constitutional Court dictated the illegalization of 386 candidacies, the general prosecutor of the State, Conde-Pumpido, the same one that the past 3rd May challenged all the Basque pro-independence left platforms and 110 candidacies of ANV, recognized that "to had gone too far" with the banning of lists but the phrase of the day arrived when he congratulated himself by the work carried out, as he assured "that he had got away with it".
Might we remember that, in his last visit to Euskal Herria, the president of the Spanish Government, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, did not show any type of doubt regarding the challenging of all the electoral groupings as well as ANV's candidacies. In his electoral meeting in Gasteiz, the maximum leader of the PSOE assured that "it had been an application of the Law of Parties in its right terms"; "not less than what demands, nor more than what establishes", he added.
On his view, there are two types of conceptions in relation to the Law of Parties; the first one relies on what the legal text says and the second considers that the voters of Batasuna do not have right to vote, reason why whenever they decide to vote some list similar to Batasuna this would have to be banned. Before this type of readings, the general prosecutor defended that the Basque pro-independence left has, "naturally", right to vote.
Facing the future, the general prosecutor noticed that the ANV's illegalization process or its suspension through penitentiary ways is not discarded after the Constitutional Court's decision and he assured that the Public Prosecutor Office "will remain watchful" to the juridical relevant circumstances for its illegalization. In this line, he assured that the Public Ministry "will act when the law authorizes to act and when it believes it is time to do it". Never the less, Conde-Pumpido indicated that the Fiscal Ministry "is not in electoral campaign, nor it is going to become in campaign object for anybody".
In reference to call made by Jone Goirizelaia, Joseba Alvarez and Pernando Barrena requesting the vote for ANV, the general prosecutor explained that the mere fact that to call to vote cannot be the cause of banning. Shall we remember never the less that that same date edition of the newspaper "El Pais", Code-Pumpido assured the contrary.
Only 20% of the Basques reject the political negotiation with the Basque pro-independence left 19/05/07 A poll published yesterday by newspapers of the Vocento group, stated that the support to that political negotiation is overwhelming in the Basque Country.
The poll reaches a much more ample population sample than usual. The Append company, ordered to make it, obtained the views of 4,055 people by telephone: 1.476 in Gipuzkoa, 1,470 in Bizkaia and 1,109 in Araba.
The collection of the information took place between the 24th April and 10th May; the sample was therefore obtained "five months after the attack of Barajas, where two people died".
It is very clear the general opinion that the Government of the PSOE must reopen negotiations with ETA, after officially proclaiming the rupture of the process after the attack of the T-4 the 30th December 2006. When this question is made, the 77.5% of the people questioned by the Vocento group bid for the reopening of the negotiation process, and only 15.7% are against it.
It was also asked if prime minister, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, and Patxi López (PSE) "must be judged to meet with the banned Batasuna". Only 7.5% thinkt hey should, while 83.1% censure this judicial process that also gathers several representatives of the Basque pro-independence left.
As far as the valuation of the performance of the parties, there is no a clear position on the PSOE Government, "a bit inadequate" (38.6%). The one of the PNV it is defined like "a bit inadequate" by 33.7%, but as "adequate enough " by more the 41.5%.
In numbers
77% defend that the Government of the PSOE must reopen the negotiations with ETA, according to this survey that was made between the months of April and May. 15% are against it.
49% also bid in favour of political negotiation with ETA, in spite of the frontal rejection of the Government and to the Anoeta method.
71% think that the political questions should be negotiated "with the banned Batasuna". Only 20.7% are against it.
71% believe that the PP's attitude towards this process is "totally inadequate". Only one out of thirteen "approve" it: 2% see it "very suitable" and 5% "adequate enough".
|
|
Deialdiak
|
2008 - Abuztua |
| A |
A |
A |
O |
O |
L |
I |
| |
1 |
2 |
3 |
| 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
| 11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
| 18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
| 25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
30 |
31 |
|
|
Movement against the Globalization
|
