2008/I/02 HIGH SPEED TRAIN: EACH CLASS DISPLAY THEIR STRATEGIES (and II)
Independentzia eta Sozialismorantz
EUSKAL HERRIA STEP by STEP
ASKAPENA's information service Nş203
Social confrontation due to HST's route is becoming worse. The Basque, Spanish and Navarra governments become the agents and guarantors of capitalists interests. The left sectors of society defend popular interests. The governments were sure that they would be able to neutralize the popular movement against this devastating macro-project. But as popular sector become more organized and able to answer, the governments are more and more worry.
In this video you can wacth to the first referendum aboat the High Speed Train in Urbina (Araba).
Popular movement arms
Organization. Popular movement against HST has formed a wide and popular platform, AHT Gelditu (Let's stop HST). In a democratic and participative way, the platform collects and channels all the initiatives, forming social fabric with all the agents that joint the platform.
· Information. According to their democratic conceptions of their work, popular moment reiterate the claim that the citizens must be exactly informed about the project. They accused the administrations of being obscurantist, as they are carrying on with the project without giving the society all the information about it. In order to counteract this obscurantist attitude, the platform have organized meetings, talks, round tables, debates to inform the citizens, and so on.
Also aiming at informing the society, the platform has a web site www.ahtgelditu.org. that would like to be the mirror an the voice of the opposition the institutions would like to shut up.
· Contribution of initiatives. The platform is not just questioning the macro-structure is being built. They are aware that public transportation is a fundamental need of our society. This is the reason why they are betting on a social train: a transportation model less expensive, less aggressive towards the environment, and more in keeping with the real needs of the citizens.
· Actions. AHT Gelditu Platform has organized many activities: trekking, placing propaganda in many different places (walls, bridges, roads...), talks, rallies in front of the firms that are taking part in the construction of the HST, as well as in front of the houses of some of the main political responsible. These rallies are always peaceful.
These activities are raising citizens consciousness, and little by little more and more people attend the activities. On November 15, more than 15,000 attended a demonstration against the HST.
· Popular plebiscites In this democratic line, several city councils have organized popular plebiscites. When asked, citizens massively reject the project.
· Sabotages As works have already start as a result of the government's politics of ?fait accompli?, in the last months there have been several sabotages against the machines and infrastructures needed to build the HST.
Financial and governmental arms
As we said, they have an obscurantist politics: they advertise the project but they refuse to give information about it. These are the strategies they are using:
?Fait accompli? politics The forces that are in favor of the HST ignore the popular movement and the citizens, who are against the project. These forces try to build the train very fast so that it become a reality that admits no opposition.
· Relentless pursuit of democratic practice. The Spanish authorities are pursuing the city councils initiatives in favor of popular plebiscites. Some times they appeal against them, other times they just forbid them. In Elorrio, the popular plebiscite organized by the city council was forbidden by the Spanish government, so several neighbours of the city organized another one.
· Repression and criminalization of the popular movement Capitalist sectors in favor of the HST are doing a very hard campaign against popular movement. They spread the following messages: social movement against the HST is minority movement that do not represent the will of the people because the institutions are the ones to do so; social movement against the HST is formed by radical sectors of the society whose only obsession is to be invariably against any improvement made by the institutions; the movement against the HST has violent methods (they consider unacceptable that people peacefully rally behind a banner in front of the construction companies); ETA is behind this movement (ETA has never act in this front, and they never say they will do so). Many activists have been arrested until today.
Everybody take sides
The Spanish government (PSOE), the Basque one (PNV-EA-IU), and the one in Navarra (UPN-PP), all of them supporters of neoliberal interests, bet on the macro-project. They have granted a huge amount of money that will be taken from social expenditure.
The PSOE, PNV and PP business elite firmly support the project. The party Izquierda Unida (EB) is plenty of contradictions: they say they are against the HST, but as they belong to the Basque government, they defend it and finance it. They voted in favor of the macro-project. Nafarroa Bai's attitude is also ambiguous: although some of their members are against it, almost the majority of them bet on the capitalist HST. The Basque Left are the only Basque political forces that are clearly against it.
Although in different degrees, the unions ELA and LAB (that have the majority in the Basque Country) are also against it, together with several ecologist, youth, social, farmers, and so on, organizations.
