Independentzia eta Sozialismorantz
EUSKAL HERRIA, STEP BY STEP
ASKAPENA'S informative Service N. 181
The Basque patriotic left wing has carried out a new popular victory. The recent local elections were extremely meaningful, since the patriotic Basque left wing had faced the unjust exigencies of an authoritarian State. As a result of this strategy, the being or not being of this political sector had been put into question by many. There were a lot of questions to be made: How has affected to this nucleus of coherent people the apartheid which they have been put under for four years? Will they maintain their social backing despite all the messages of the enemy announcing their decomposition and dissolution? Will they continue having their seduction capacity although the Spanish PSOE and the Basque PNV have kicked the peace process aside; a process for which the Basque patriotic left wing had made a serious bet? Will they still believe in the electoral participation once they have seen how the fascism has annulled 380 popular candidacies?
Will the people continue believing in their potentiality and initiative when the 85,000 signatures backing the popular candidacies did not serve for anything? What kind of support may have in the ballot boxes some candidacies partially made illegal and which have been ignored by the mass media, being persecuted in the street, repressed, and considered as " useless votes "? Will the popular sectors continue betting on a decisive peace process or will they lose their patience? Will they continue betting on an institutional work that has been denied to them or, fed up with the humiliations they have had to undergo? Will they just refuse it?
The election day
Many and important questions that floated around were in the mind of everyone and they were fully answered in the electoral day. Some morning incidents were the expression of the malaise and rage that felt the ones who had been made illegal. They were incidents of little importance which did not prevent the exercise of suffrage. More frequent and extended were the protests made around the ballot boxes against the responsible for the fascist illegalization, when these ones arrived to deposit their vote. Most of these politicians met an unwished "welcoming committee ". The people who had been made illegal were waiting for them with the habitual posters against the political apartheid. And the nourished police presence could not prevent that the demo-facists should have to listen to the right denunciations, which have accompanied to them throughout all the electoral campaign.
But the most showy and spectacular element was the massive mobilization of the social sectors that conform the Basque patriotic left wing. Where it was legal, all the electoral colleges had their corresponding ANV (Basque Patriotic Action) -the abbreviations of dignity- representatives. In other electoral colleges, where ANV had been made illegal, there was the presence of militants whom they demanded to act like representatives this provoked intense debates with the presidents of electoral colleges. To all these colleges the social base of the Basque patriotic left wing approached to deposit a vote that, in many of the cases, was condemned beforehand to go directly to the wastebasket. But before going into the wastebasket, they had to be counted and, although they did not appear in election certificates, these votes appeared in the account of the political analysts.
Once the ballot boxes had been closed and, when they began to know the result, the news jumped. The Basque left not only continued alive, but it also was demonstrating a very significant presence in the elections. A surprising phenomenon was taking place. A force which has been made illegal for four years, marginalized, deprived of communicative, social and economic spaces was growing with respect to previous elections. It demonstrated its establishment in all Euskal Herria and it held position like a mighty and structured left wing political force. The results that were being known destroyed previous expectations of total failure made by many ones, announcing the end of the Basque patriotic left wing. That night confirmed that in numbers we are less than we should but many more than our enemies imagined.
After the electoral night
Without making complex analysis of numbers, we will give brief data that justify the optimism of the Basque patriotic left wing and of their many friends. 150,000 votes, in so adverse conditions, should have been a good result; but very over the forecasts, they were up to 187,000 votes that demanded a democratic process. The Basque patriotic left wing has been the most voted political option in more than 55 localities, in 25 of which already they would have assured the majority. The candidates chosen for the provincial institutions were 24 (19 of which were considered illegal). The chosen councilmen were 719 (282 of which were considered illegal).
The PNV, during all these months, has been the faithful ally of the PSOE at the time of draining of content the peace process and squashing the Basque patriotic left wing. The president of the PNV has gained a big support in the Court of Madrid but their countrymen and women have given the back to him. Although the PNV is the political party with more support, it has experienced an important loss of votes in all the circumscriptions where it has been present. The Spanish right wing, so belligerent with the political resolution process, now, due to its strategy, it is having a bad time in several territories; the attitude of the PP has supposed to it a loss of 50,000 votes in Euskal Herria. In Navarre (South-East Euskal Herria), the voters of centre with certain Basque sensibility, have had very good results. The news was not very encouraging. In a key territory for the resolution of the conflict, a Basque political movement which has not implied at all in the resolution of the conflict got a big social support.
In this coalition, well-known like Nafarroa Bai, several political currents have come together in order to take the place of the Spanish extreme right wing in this territory: UPN and to leave without space to Batasuna -the Basque patriotic left wing. They have ignored the illegalization process of those who were their party mates and they have collaborated with the apartheid whenever they have been able to. Will they have an attitude of firmness in front of the State, an attitude that long ago they resigned to? Or, on the contrary they will continue wasting energies to marginalize the Basque patriotic left wing? Will they promote the change that the society that has voted to them demands? We suspect that their heterogeneous composition, its peaceful and conciliating will, its dependency of the Basque right wing (PNV) and their attachment to the institutional is going to let in evidence their strategy.
Perspective of future
The Basque patriotic left wing did not look for nor was it its ambition to make a mere distribution of political positions to carry out the institutional management. The triumph that has harvested in the battle for the votes shows new challenges. The first one - another new and harsh battle- consists in demanding to the rest of political formations all those institutional positions that, by popular will, correspond to the Basque patriotic left wing and which they have gone to other hands because of the illegalization process. From the very electoral night this demand is being made to the usurpers. We will give more information of this new battle. The other challenge is much more determining from a future perspective: to activate the entire human potential, and now institutional in the hands of the Basque patriotic left wing in order to reactivate a resolution process which goes to the roots of the problem.
