EU election party to be illegalised by Spanish state.

by iosaf Fri Jun 12, 2009 22:33

The Spanish state results were flawed.

Not as seriously flawed as the US Gore v. Bush presidential election which we all remember nor as suspicious as the Scottish parliament elections which for some reason we choose not to remember. Perhaps because the SNP won overall and in future encyclopedic hindsight it won't seem suspicious if their current mandate was significantly short of outright flying of saltires and closing of the border with England. Which prompts me to remind readers that in some Scottish constituencies more votes were "spoilt" and disgarded than were needed to return a Labour MSP. Look it up on wikipedia or ask fair election expert Jimmy Carter, whichever is more convenient for you.

Spoilt votes are jinx and ghost in the machine of liberal democracy.

Readers in Ireland who are used to slow Irish counting must sometimes wonder at the celerity with which continental European states manage to count up the votes and issue results on the very same day as polling. Most of us must know that vote counting is a really dodgey business & anyone in liberal democratic politics knows that more often than not the first hours of a count give a general impression which more often than not tallies with the accepted profile of the constituency. Lesser candidates simply give up and unless they're really desperate to hold on to their seat like big swinging Mickey Mc Dowell was in his time - they don't ask for recounts.

However, the EU elections in the Spanish state produced conflicting figures and percentages and thus results which alas were reproduced not only on the Government website but then in the commercial press and archived on wikipedia and cited by me on this very page.

Initiative Internationalista reckoned it was weird that some Basque towns with clear historic abertzale leanings didn't cast any votes for them.

Yesterday, as the PSOE argued its rightful share of the votes would adjust the win of the PP from two seats to only one, Arnaldo Otegi gave a press conference, (these things are becoming regular occurences this year which is interesting considering since he got out of prison he hasn't felt the need to sit next to any symbols, operate under any party name or you could be forgiven for thinking merit such media attention. But Otegi, the household name only has to let the press knows he wants to offer opinions and for some unfathomable reason his words are reported. He really does occupy a very extraordinary place in contemporary European politics. As I wrote a few times before, remember kids you will never be as special a case as Arnaldo. Of course without dwelling on how Basque independence groups survive their illegalisation and the repression [their] newspaper also published an article challenging the results.

Anyway -

Otegi argued that II would have actually won a seat had the votes been counted properly and perhaps if they were counted yet again and the 97,000 votes which were declared spoilt in the Basque region were examined.

It certainly is an interesting idea but not one which I recommend spending too much time on. As I've written a host of times, there is only rule to the liberal democracy sham - The government wins elections.

Meanwhile it is now official that rather than garnering a few thousand less votes than the PP in the Basque, II actually got more votes. & in Catalonia they got an extra 200 votes without examining the spoilt ones.

For those who really do take a detailed interest in this sort of thing, here is the website of the Spanish state electoral office http://resultados2009.mir.es/99PE/DPE99999TO.htm & a report in Catalan which brings you through the long list of challenges mostly from smaller parties to various results http://www.vilaweb.cat/www/noticia?p_idcmp=3595568

only solution to the vagaries of the secret ballot universal franchise liberal democratic system of mass abstention is to count & colour their effing thumbs.

by iosaf Sun Jun 07, 2009 23:50

115,281 votes were cast in the Basque region for the party "II"
207,040 for the centre right Basque nationalist PNV or 28.54%
200,249 for the Spanish Socialist party PSOE or 27.61%
115,911 votes were cast for the Spanish right wing party PP 15.98%
40,963 votes went to the EA-Aralar Indepedence coalition option coalition with Catalan republicans and Galician nationalists or 5.65%

Elsewhere in the Spanish state a total of 175,889 votes were cast for the party "II" a difference of 60,608 votes. In total 1.2% of the votes passed by the 43.01% of those EU citizens with their papers in order and thus franchise in the Spanish state who bothered voting went to the party II.

The May 2009 census of residents in the Spanish state stood at 46,063,511 of which 15% were born outside the Spanish state and of which 6% were EU citizens. We have no idea what percentage of those who bothered voting were born in the Spanish state or outside of it.

The Basque electorate with less than half of its participation gave approximately the same share (16%) of votes to "II" as it did the Spanish Unionist party the PP & without question as usual gave most of its votes on its usual low participation in any election to parties which support or seek more Basque independence.

Nonetheless, with roughly 6.5 million votes the Spanish right wing PP won the EU election against the PSOE's roughly 6 million votes, which may be compared with roughly 10 million votes each party got at the 2008 general elections - & so of Spain's 50 MEPs : 23 will sit on the right of the EU parliament and dream of Sardinian holidays, 21 will get hourly text messages telling them what to think, say or wear from Zapatero and only enjoy concensual sex with their established partner (even if they're gay coz now they're expected to be married) & of the final 6 Spanish MEPs 4 will be catholic regionalists of the Catalan or Basque variety and 2 will actually be the kind of left wing you might just have a decent enough exchange of views with on the right night if the suitable kind of stimulus was available. & sure you'd probably have to buy it too -

coz of the 50 Spanish MEP's elected in today's farce - only 2 will be decent enough types to only claim an average industrial wage for whatever the fuck it is they're going to be doing for the next four years .

http://www.elpais.com/especial/elecciones-europeas/resu...na/53
http://www.eitb.com/elecciones/europeas/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_electi...2009_(Spain)

I was too busy shagging a TV girl to both electing a MEP on industrial wage.

by iosaf Sun May 24, 2009 14:35

As readers of the thread and its updates will know, a decision made by the Spanish Supreme Court that "II", a coalition of fringe left communists & including platform anarchist, was a continuation of Batasuna was then overturned by the Spanish state's Constitutional tribunal.

Concurrent to which the group "II" made a statement condemning political violence and committing the party to peaceful means of pursuing political objectives allbeit without specifically using the three little letters .

Then yesterday three leading members of illegalised political parties one of whom is quite well known internationally gave a press conference to which the press turned up, despite them legally speaking for nobody. Arnaldo Otegi, Itziar Lopategi & Miren Legorburu of respectively the first eight and tenth illegalised political parties since 2003 asked Basque leftwing independence supports to give their vote to "II":

Not because "II" is a continuation of their political parties but because many of the criteria for economic reform are common and so on so forth.


This can & ought to be understood 2 ways at the very least especially by those on the left in Ireland who are perhaps ignorant of the political hue of "II" and the solidarity process which has opened between "nationalists" and "internationalists" :-

(a) How many votes are now going to be counted normally and what those votes may be felt to mean.
(b) How many votes are going to be deposited mindful of the condemnation of political violence and what those votes may be felt to have meant.

by iosaf mac d. Fri May 22, 2009 15:11

& so the 11th political party and grouping to be illegalised in the Spanish state becomes the first in the 21st century to be legalised again.

For we can't overlook the roots of the "party political laws" of the Spanish state in the historical and social process termed "the Transition" which saw all parties which had been illegalised under the fascist dictatorship returned to legal status.

Anyway.

Let's see how many votes they get.

by iosaf Wed May 20, 2009 14:37

With only three hours to go before the deadline for a rehearing, the political grouping "Iniciativa Internacionalista" presented a detailed process to overturn the decision by the Spanish state's supreme court's decision to illegalise its electoral lists for the EU parliamentary elections campaigning for which officially begins on Thursday.

In a lengthy declaration made in Barcelona the party has unequivocally committed itself "one and all" to the pursuit of political change without recourse to violence or any armed struggle

The usual list of suspects from the honoured intelligentsia, ether of intellectuals both great & minor, activists of many left or alternative hue & slightly flea bitten thinkers of the fringe subcultural underground made their noises in the last days which whether or not they may remind the powers that be of the oxidised clanging of useless belfries and dingbats are nonetheless to be given slight heed "on account of them being all to often quite correct in their analysis".

Accordingly the Argentinian Nobel Peace prize laureate , architect and sculptor, Don Adolfo Pérez Esquivel fired off an open letter to Spanish premier Zapatero, complaining about the obvious cheapening of the democratic contract by such electoral list inteference & demanding he intervene.

Those interested in either Nobel Prizes of the recent history of the Spanish state will know that Perez Esquivel a pacifist of christian background, got his prize in 1980 after a career which had seen him defend human rights in Latin America, notably highlighting the recruitment of Argentine children to that country's death squads during its so-called "dirty war" period & some others will remember the role he played was invited to play as interlocutor with ETA after one of its ceasfires (the 8th I believe - though could be wrong)

his page on the Nobel (english) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1980....html

His open letter from the anarchosite in Spanish http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/carta-premio-nobel-a...sa-in

a back article from 2003 on the role he played in defending the "Egunkaria" case (the Basque language newspaper which was closed,whilst its staff arrested during the Aznar years for fomenting terrorism & whose criminal convictions have yet to be safely concluded incidently :- "when communcative media turns to thought crime" http://www.indymedia.ie/article/30093?comment_order=des...=true

(when you think about it, his open letter to Zapatreo might be understood in European history just like the one Mrs Berlusconi wrote but for obviously different reasons and anyway he's not as pretty c/f http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92206 since when of course for those more intersted in Mr B than things Spanish, the respected writer and noted opponent of Italian neo-quasi-fascism, Umberto Eco has declared he would like to publically present Silvio Berlusconi with a copy of Nabokov's "Lolita". )

I can not expect even the most specialised of Irish readers to comb the electoral lists presented by II. But I would point out that of the paltry 23 people on the list who were declared "contaminated" and thus made the whole party a "continuation of Batasuna / ETA and thus may be deemed as proving the party II is a mere instrument of said Batasuna /ETA", the detailed judgement doesn't stand up the surprisingly logical critical analysis I am myself capable of on a fine sunny day and full stomach. Nor can I expect readers to take an interest in the breadth and depth and variety of the support shown to II, a solidarity and concern which is truly noteworthy when one accepts the very small likelihood or probability that the grouping actually garner enough votes to elect more than one MEP at best.
But one comment and the outrage it met from the British writer Martin Amis might be mentioned because it was almost to a word an analysis I had offered on these pages a few years back on the extraordinary role the roots of ETA's activities through its various incarnations played in the shaping of Spain's attempt at emergent democracy. /cf "The Death of "Wilson" : ETA & Democracy" http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86658
I remember ruefully how I atttracted horribly similar & hurtful reponses which Amis is now enduring in the comments, allbeit on the wider scale of righwing media & radio from Spain to the USA. For just as this week Martin Amis is accused of supporting ETA's armed campaign for having the temerity of articulating the obvious facts of history, it seems that every time one mentions Basque issues one has to preface one's words with condemnation of terror (of only one side or intensity) and thus never get the point across that the problem nor its solution is not just about ETA

e.g. Number 5 on the 23 candidates of II presented as evidence for its illegalisation is a previous candidate (unelected) of ANV. He has never gone on record condemning any specific incident of political violence, such as the cowardly assassination of socialist ex-councillors during election week or the bullet through the nape of a 70 year old construction firm owner's neck.

Jayzhus the Pope might condemn euthanasia and abortion in Italy but has never said peep about electric chairs or lethal injections. Can the lack of that declaration mean the Pope supports state murder in the USA (which until this 21st century also included the mentally handicapped) or does it simply mean his holiness has chosen to avoid a posture which is politically useless for his organisation?

__________________________________

The Irish Times in its only ever editorial on the Basque situation noted the dubiously wide brush applied to the political party laws. I would refer readers to that editorial via my article on the election of the current PSOE (Spanish labour) first minister of Basque regional parliament thanks to the unprecedented support of the rightwing opposition the PP (spanish tories)

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92228
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0507/1....html

Meanwhile a prominent member of the Irish Basque Solidarity Commitee has seen published a good article from his "abertzale" perspective on the curious lack of solidarity shown by the left in Ireland to the Basques. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92367 A lack of solidarity and interest which this "II" case clearly shows extends to blythly ignoring electoral meddling and inteference in franchise rights and voting mathematics which are now of concern to the fringe and alternative left & all those who have consistently sought a process of representation, participation, conflict resolution, parity of esteem, dialogue, reconciliation & thus peace which is not the errant strategy of assimulation, illegalisation, criminalisation, oppression, provocation which can and does only serve the nurture of the roots of conflict.

II's press conference in Barcelona with Catalan independence & Red flag drap

by iosaf Sun May 17, 2009 23:03 barcelona - catalunya

this really is an oddly numerological story...

The Spanish supreme court did a late night session on Friday which stretched into the small hours of Saturday morning when at 3am they voted 11 votes to 5 to illegalise the party "II" after deciding that 23 of its candidates were connected to ANV such as its leader who had been number three on the list for the Spanish senate constiuency of Guipúzcoa / Gipuzkoa.

This is the 11th political party to see its lists illegalised since the passing of the amendment to the "political party law" of 2003.
http://www.lavanguardia.es/politica/noticias/20090516/5....html

During these 6 years the interpretation of that law has gone from removing state funding to parties which in Spain are subsidised by the central state on a proportional basis to how many votes they receive (rather than how many seats they win - which is good news for the post-marxist IU who average over 3 million votes but are lucky to win group status in the parliament).

Then the Eurovision came along. & Spain only got 23 votes, thanks to Andorra being nice in Catalan, French & English languages (but not castillian) on the phone to Moscow and voting their douze points for the Spanish song & then off stage demanding that Spain be disqualified from the Eurovision contest next year for ........ breaking the voting rules . C/f http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Spain_in_danger_of_Eurovisi..._RTVE

oh irony.

Meanwhile, back in the real world of non-cheesiness, the party organisation of "II" (two big "i's" not an 11) decided it is going to sue the Spanish state for defamation.

This is because its whole list are now labelled & here's a thing - the vast majority of them aren't Basques, aren't "abertzale", are pacifists, are against armed struggle, are on the left (some are notedly disaffected with the post-marxist party IU) and some are simply secular Galicians (such people do exist).

& so in their statement they called this latest interpretation of the law the worst attack on civil liberties since the coup d'etat attempt of February 23 which you can read about here in my article "Lest we Forget" : http://www.indymedia.ie/article/68739

They are also going to do a concert and benefit gig and big nosh up on the street supper in Barcelona, where some of the leading list members who last week were just boring kind of dour commie types live. After all they are now officially dangerous front proxy patsies of terrorism. I may go along and eat some of those tapas / pinxas things & let you know about it later..,

http://www.iniciativainternacionalista.org/index.php?op...mid=4

by iosaf Thu May 14, 2009 23:39

Mr Sastre in his 83 years of life (rather than 93 years as I mistakenly wrote above) never appeared on a Batasuna election list or even the predecessor lists to Batasuna.

But he did appear on the lists of ANV in the Spanish state council or municipal elections when that party won 439 seats. Now do the soft maths a moment there - there had to be more than 439 people on the electoral lists. (c/f Spanish State elections 2007 "votes & not votes" http://www.indymedia.ie/article/82766?condense_comments...false )

ANV was of course a few years ago a political party which had been moribund a while and as such with as many members and activists and posters as the Irish Clann na Talmhan which despite winning 14 seats in 1943 never really held its own.., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clann_na_Talmhan

But then it was resurrected, some said as a "Batasuna proxy" replacing the EHAK formation fudge. This is where I first published its logo - http://www.indymedia.ie/article/80679?&condense_comment...98922 & ironically reflected on the game of "Spotting the little old lady" in the following comment.

The poster for "Internationalist Initiative" of course has no "little old lady", yet one person on the list, the little old man, Señor Sastre, was on a list, perhaps as an "innocent" (it galls me to write) before and as such is now contaminated enough to contaminate a new list.

If this had happened in Ireland, then any tourist who had been in the Wexford Inn at a gig to hear trad music and slurp guinness would be "evil enough" to damn anyone they attempted to join in political activity.

THAT IS THE REAL NATURE OF THE LUDICROUS IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SPANISH STATE'S ILLEGALISATION OF BATASUNA

we live if it is often said in a world where everyone knows everyone else through at least six common acquaintances. (c/f http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation ) That logically [and dare not quibble with me on this] means that every reader of indymedia is only a few well researched connections away from having their right to political representation and participation illegalised as being a front for ETA.

my last article on the Basque thing :-

we are all only 6 people away from being illegalised.