Re: EHJ Website

[Ed George <edgeorge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't know what this sop would be: sops are a bit thin on the ground
this way lately. As to the current situation, I don't have time to go
into that now (but I'll try to return to it some time next week) but for
the moment here are some selections from a report I wrote July of last
year just after the Basque elections of that year (which used to be
archived here soemwhere but doesn't appear to be anymore) which will
give you some necessary background. If anyone wants a full copy of this
by the way contact me off-list and I'll send it to you.

************

BEHIND THE ELECTIONS IN EUSKADI

WHAT EXACTLY WERE THESE ELECTIONS FOR?

The elections held on 13 May this year were to elect the parliament of
the CAV (Comunidad Autonómica Vasca-Basque Autonomous Community).

[...]

TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE MAIN POLITICAL PARTIES.

The main Basque nationalist party (and by far the largest party in the
CAV) is the Eusko Alderdi Jeltzalea-Partido Nacionalista Vasco
(EAJ-PNV-Basque Nationalist Party), launched in 1895 by the 'founding
father' of modern Basque nationalism, Sabino Arana (who also,
incidentally, coined the phrase 'Euskadi', and who designed the Basque
flag, the Ikurriña, modelled on the British Union Jack). Today, the PNV
is a moderate bourgeois-nationalist party of Christian-Democratic stamp;
it is, in fact, a member of the Christian Democratic International. It
is not openly independentist: its statutes define it as 'an instrument
of the realisation of the nationalist political project', which 'seeks
to win the greatest social, economic, political and cultural development
of the citizens of Euskadi'. Indeed, one of the reasons for the varying
and often apparently mutually contradictory political deals made by PNV
with other political parties in both Euskadi and Spain is precisely an
ambiguity at the heart of the PNV's shifting conceptions of
'independence', 'sovereignty', 'autonomy', etc.

[...]

The other bourgeois nationalist Basque party is Eusko Alkatasuna (EA),
which emerged as a split from the PNV in 1986 as a result of
disagreements over political collaboration with the Spanish Socialists. 
EA thus can appear more 'radical' in its stance [...] but in reality not
only is EA cut from the same political cloth as the PNV but it has stood
alongside them as part of a joint electoral ticket in a number of Basque
elections, including the most recent ones.

The other Basque nationalist formation is EH (Euskal Herritarrok-Popular
Unity), set up in the summer of 1998 by Herri Batasuna, the political
party commonly referred to by the Spanish State bourgeois press as the
'political wing' of ETA. In fact, EH is not much more than HB by another
name, set up principally for fear that the Spanish State government was
on the point of declaring HB an illegal organisation. HB itself was
established in 1978 with a political program comprised of the following
five points: amnesty for the political prisoners and refugees;
establishment of democratic and civil liberties; withdrawal of the
Spanish State security forces; improvement of workers' living
conditions; and a national statute of autonomy for the Spanish Basque
provinces (including Navarra) that would recognise the right to
self-determination and independence Euskera as the national language
with priority over Spanish. Interestingly, HB is the principal Basque
political force in Navarra, where the PNV has scant representation.

[...]

Alongside these nationalist formations also operate the Spanish State
political parties. The Partido Popular (PP-Popular Party), which has
been the governing party in Madrid since 1996, traces is roots back,
through the Alianza Popular, directly to leading figures of the Franco
dictatorship (for example, the present-day President of the Xunta de
Galicia-another of the Spanish State's autonomous communities-is none
other than the founder of AP, and a long-standing Franco minister,
Manuel Fraga). In Álava the PP maintains an electoral pact with Unidad
Alavesa (UA), a right wing, 'foralist', pro-Spanish State party. 

The PSE-EE (Partido Socialista de Euskadi-Euskadiko Ezkerra) is the
Basque section of the Spanish State Socialist Party, PSOE; PSE-EE had
supported the PNV in the government of the CAV from 1986 up to 1998. 
Despite this, however, PSOE, the governing party in Madrid from 1982 to
1996, has always been a virulent opponent of Basque nationalism, even up
to the point of organising a secret anti-ETA state-funded terrorist
organisation of its own while it was in government, the GAL (Grupos
Antiterroristas de Liberación-Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups). In
December of last year PSOE and the PP signed an Anti-Terrorist Agreement
in Madrid which committed them to an explicitly police conception of the
Basque problem and its resolution. The name of the Spanish Socialists'
Basque party derives from the fact that the above mentioned Euskadiko
Ezkerra fused with the then PSE in 1993.

Izquierda Unida-Ezker Batua (IU-EB-United Left) is the Basque section of
the Spanish State coalition Izquierda Unida, set up by the Spanish
Communist Party in 1986. Even though nowadays in the rest of the Spanish
State IU is reduced almost in its entirety to Communist Party members
(estimates put the percentage of members of IU who are also members of
the PCE-Partido Comunista de España-at around eighty per cent) in
Euskadi the majority of the membership of IU-EB is independent of the
Basque section of PCE, the EPK (Euskadiko Partidu Komunista-Communist
Party of Euskadi). IU-EB has traditionally held a much more sympathetic
position with regard to Basque nationalism that the other Spanish State
parties, and has played, for this reason, a significant role in recent
Basque politics.

WHY WERE THESE ELECTIONS IMPORTANT?

In order to answer this we need to go back and look at what happened
before the last CAV elections. From its formation in 1981 until 1998 the
government of the CAV had been in the hands of PNV, from 1986 with the
support of PSE-EE. The political framework for the collaboration between
PSE-EE and PNV was essentially based on the defence of the existing
constitutional settlement in Euskadi. PNV has been nothing if not
opportunist: its most important political principle has been preserving
its control over the governmental apparatus in Vitoria. For this reason,
PNV has agreed pacts with both the PP and PSOE in various circumstances
when necessary. Nevertheless, it remains tied to its nationalist
credentials, and, via this, to the broader nationalist movement,
including the abertzale (radical nationalist) component. In this
respect, the key to understand the shifting relationship between PNV
(and, to a lesser extent, EA) and the abertzale left is the desire on
the part of each to keep the other-to use J. Edgar Hoover's
phrase-inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing
in. A break by PNV from the rest of the nationalist movement would
deprive the former of its essential role in Basque politics: a defence
of the constitutional settlement in Euskadi without a Basque nationalist
gloss would only require the collaboration of the Spanish State parties,
PP and PSOE; on the other hand, to have the abertzale left in general
and ETA in particular running out of control would have a negative
knock-on effect on PNV.

In this respect, the wave of anti-Basque-nationalist outrage that swept
Spain, including Euskadi, following ETA's kidnapping and murder of the
PP councillor Miguel Angel Blanco in 1997 set the alarm bells ringing
for the 'constitutional nationalists' of PNV and EA: the danger of
popular revulsion against ETA turning itself on PNV and EA was perceived
as very real-from 1993 the gap between the combined votes of the Spanish
State parties and the Basque nationalists had been narrowing, and from
1996 the PP and PSE-EE combined had been winning a greater share of the
vote in Spanish State elections in Euskadi than Basque nationalism. 
While this was not a new situation, in the 1980s there had existed such
a degree of trust between PNV and PSE, that, for example, in the 1986
CAV elections, even though PSE-EE obtained two more seats than PNV,
weakened by the split with EA, the socialists decided to support the
investiture of a solely Basque nationalist government with a Basque
nationalist lehendakari (the CAV first minister). It was clear that such
a scenario could no longer be taken for granted by the end of the 1990s.

On the part of ETA too there were real signs of a danger of
isolationism, arising from the same source. Both wings of the Basque
nationalist movement were disposed to forge a working agreement of some
sort between themselves.

The impetus, not for the first time, came from Ireland (it has been a
constant within the Basque nationalist movement to look for analogies
and inspiration to Ireland). Over the summer of 1998, a series of more
or less secret meetings took place between representatives of PNV and EA
and ETA, with a view to forging a working pact of political
co-operation, and in the final result the experience of the Irish Peace
Process was to feature prominently. The result of this process was the
signing of the Pact of Lizarra (named after the town in Navarra in which
it was signed) on 12 September 1998 by PNV, EA, HB, IU-EB and a host of
other, smaller political parties, trade unions and community
organisations. The signing of the pact was followed four days later by
ETA's announcement of an indefinite cease-fire. The Pact of Lizarra in
turn directly paved the way for a Basque nationalist government in
Vitoria when the elections for the Basque parliament were held in
October of that year; on 30 June, PSOE had withdrawn from its
12-year-old coalition with the PNV, accusing the PNV (hardly unfairly)
of having made a secret pact with HB. As expected, the PNV won the
October elections with 21 of the parliament's seats; the PP jumped from
11 to 16, followed by EH, which increased its seats to 14 from 11; and
the Socialists, who won a total of 14. The 10 remaining seats were
divided among Eusko Alkartasuna, IU-EB and UA.

With the combined votes of PNV, EA and HB (who, for the first time, took
their seats in the Basque parliament-up to that point they had held
that, as the parliament had been established under the auspices of a
constitution that they did not accept they would not bestow on it the
approval implied by their participation), a government composed of PNV
and EA was invested, with the PNV's Juan José Ibarretxe, installed as
lehendakari. This was not the first exclusively nationalist government
of the CAV (PNV had been able to govern alone from 1980 to 1984, and had
managed to limp along as a minority from 1984 to 1986), but it was the
first exclusively nationalist government to incorporate the abertzale
left.

But this situation did not last. Unhappy with the performance of the
mainstream nationalist parties, ETA called off its cease-fire at the end
of November 1999, and in January 2000 EH withdrew from the Basque
parliament, paralysing it-since the PNV government was unable to
function without its votes, and the government could not be removed
since the combined votes of the non-nationalist parties would have been
insufficient. This is the reason that the recent elections were held a
year early.

WHAT DID THE PACT OF LIZARRA SAY?

The Pact of Lizarra was an attempt to bring the lessons of the Irish
Peace Process as interpreted by Basque nationalism to bear on the
problems of Euskadi. The Pact was in two parts: the first a summary
analysis of the Irish process, the second an outline sketch of the
necessary parameters for a process of dialogue in Euskadi based on the
conclusions of the first part. The estimation of the Irish process it
contained was wildly over-optimistic, suggesting, for example, that the
peace process had brought with it 'the recognition of the right of
self-determination for the Irish people as a whole [...]', missing the
point that the Irish process in fact took decisive steps towards the
institutionalisation of the partition of Ireland. In the summer
preceding the signing of the pact, during which sustained negotiations
were taking place between the Basque nationalist formations and ETA, HB
had made a number of statements regarding the Irish peace process along
similar lines. For example, in April 1998 HB issued a statement entitled
'Ireland: A Firm Step Towards Freedom', in which they declared that 'The
Stormont Agreement is based on the right to self-determination for the
whole island. That is, in the future, it will be the people of Ireland
alone who will decide to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their
wish, and the British and Irish Governments will recognise the
legitimacy of whatever choice is freely exercised by a majority of the
people [...].' From this analysis HB argued that a similar process in
Euskadi was not only possible, but urgent. Whether this interpretation
of the Irish process was opportunistically disingenuous, or simply
mistaken, is not clear.

Accordingly, in the second part of the Pact of Lizarra, referring
directly to the necessary steps for Euskadi, it was recognised that
'[...] a definitive resolution [...] would respect the plurality of
Basque society, would regard each viewpoint with equality, and would
deepen democracy in the sense that the people of Euskal Herria would be
given the last word regarding the shaping of their future, with the
states involved respecting that decision' (my emphasis). While this is
absolutely not what had been happening in Ireland, it is this section,
the most contentious within the Spanish State setting, that was the key
to the Pact's significance. The text is hardly unambiguous, yet this
section can be read as a statement for self-determination, and-since the
term Euskal Herria is used-self-determination for the Basque Country
understood in the global sense, that is, as comprising the CAV, Navarra,
and the French Basque territories. Yet the process of dialogue envisaged
by the Pact, which would have clarified the exact meaning of the process
underway, never took place. ETA circumvented the process that they had
in good measure helped to bring about, and engineered a return to the
status quo ante.

WHY DID ETA CALL OFF ITS CEASE-FIRE?

This is the big question: while the cease-fire had been expected to
happen over the course of 1998, and really took nobody by surprise, its
ending was quite the reverse, catching by surprise, it is said, even a
good part of the mesa nacional (the leading body) of HB. So why did ETA
do it?

In their communiqué announcing the end of the cease-fire, ETA noted that
the process in Euskadi had been 'facing an impasse, but [that] no
effective political proposal was made. PNV and EA gave importance to the
current framework, sticking to the Moncloa statute [i.e. the Gernika
Statute of Autonomy], and not to the initiatives for a new
politico-juridical framework.' What ETA was referring to concretely here
was the content of the agreements reached, not in the Pact of Lizarra,
but in the discussions between itself, PNV and EA in the summer
preceding the Pact of Lizarra, in which ETA, PNV and EA had committed
themselves to take 'decisive steps' towards 'the creation of a sovereign
and unique institution to encompass Araba, Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa, Lapurdi,
Nafarroa and Zuberoa', that is, the whole of Euskal Herria. This
agreement was not made public until ETA called off the cease-fire.

The idea of a 'sovereign and unique institution' referred to in the
agreement of the summer of 1998 was evidently the thinking behind the
launch, under the auspices of Lizarra, of Udalbiltza-an assembly
composed of locally elected Basque nationalist representatives from all
the Basque territories within the CAV, Navarra and France-on 6 February
1999. In the light of the summer 1998 agreement it appears that
Udalbiltza was intended to be a 'parliament in waiting' for Euskal
Herria and that the conception of ETA amounted to the establishment,
with the assistance of the nationalist parties, of a kind of
'parliamentary dual power'. That up until its suspension at the behest
of the PNV following the end of the cease-fire the limit of 
Udalbiltza's activity was to call for the annual celebration of the
Aberri Eguna, the Basque homeland day, evidently fell short of abertzale
expectations; and this is the reason that ETA has blamed above everyone
else the Basque nationalists of PNV and EA for the breakdown.

[...]

HOW DID THE DIFFERENT PARTIES REACT TO THIS SITUATION?

For the Spanish State parties PP and PSOE the lesson of these events was
that they should never happen again: both parties regarded what PNV and
EA had done as nothing short of outright treachery.

[...]

On 12 March 2000 the Spanish State general election was held, and, when
the votes had been counted, it was clear that the PP had achieved the
largest vote in Euskadi in its history. A quick calculation at PP
headquarters showed that the combined votes of PP and PSOE, if repeated
in the forthcoming CAV elections, would translate into enough seats in
the Basque parliament to unseat the Basque nationalists. That night,
carried away by the euphoria of his absolute majority in the Spanish
parliament, Aznar suggested the real possibility of unseating the
'historic nationalisms', beginning with the PNV, in the forthcoming
round of autonomous elections. Mayor Oreja (a Basque by birth himself,
further proving the rule that the most extreme chauvinists often come
from areas where minority nationalism is strong) was informed that now
was the time to risk himself as PP candidate for lehendakari.

The final break between PSE and PNV did not come until February 2000
(although the bridges had been burning since June 1998, when PSE walked
out on the Basque government on hearing about PNV's backroom
negotiations with HB), following ETA's assassination of the leading
Álaves socialist, and former vice-lehendakari, Fernando Buesa. PSE
demanded that PNV definitively renounce the strategy of Lizarra. From
that point on, the doors to collaboration were open between PP and PSE. 
In September of that year, PP and PSE jointly presented motions of
censure against the PNV government in the Basque parliament. In
December, PP and PSOE signed an 'Agreement in favour of Freedom and
Against Terrorism' in Madrid, in which both parties called on the PNV to
break definitively all links with the framework of Lizarra, a demand
which was presented as a precondition to any future pact or agreement
with Basque nationalism. The agreement declared: 'PP and PSOE want to
make explicit, before the Spanish people, our firm resolution to defeat
the terrorists' strategy, using all the measures that the Estado de
Derecho [i.e. the legal framework of the Spanish State] puts at our
disposition.' The clear signal offered by the agreement was that the
close collaboration envisaged could be, and would be, extended to the
point of governmental collaboration in the Basque parliament following
the next CAV elections. While the leaderships of PP and PSOE did not
openly admit this, they went out of their way not to deny it, right up
to the date of polling. Nicolás Redondo, for example, general secretary
of PSE, writing in the Spanish daily El País two months before the
election, dealt with the question like this:

'The question which is insistently put to me by the journalists is who
is PSE is going to pact with after the elections in Euskadi, as if I
already knew the results beforehand. It is certainly an interesting
question, but we will have to wait and see. The important thing is that
[...] the future government of Euskadi be constitutional and statutory.'

[...]

AND THE BASQUE NATIONALIST PARTIES?

For the Basque nationalists of PNV and EA, mindful of the combined
assault of the PP and PSOE bloc, what was necessary was a restatement of
their nationalist credentials. Having agreed to run a joint electoral
campaign (which they had done in the past in some municipal elections),
they came out, in their joint election manifesto, for
'self-determination', although in the vaguest and most contradictory
manner possible. While defending the present constitutional order in
Euskadi (the Statute of Autonomy and the constitution), they demanded
that 'Basque society [...] be consulted to freely, peacefully and
democratically decide its own political future', that the French Basque
territories be guaranteed 'the freedom to establish whatever mode of
association and co-operation' they choose, 'without limits other than
the will of the people and of the institutions that democratically
represent them', and that Euskadi be given a formal voice in the
European Community.

Effectively, this platform amounted to self-determination and the
existing constitutional order (albeit with ameliorations) at the same
time; yet the PNV/EA platform was more radical on the question of
self-determination than it had previously been before. The issues at
stake in the election were clear.

As for EH, their response to the situation and their platform for the
election amounted to nothing more than triumphalist tubthumping. ETA's
return to the armed struggle, an enormous disappointment for a wide
swathe of the abertzale left, had paradoxically had the effect of
driving the abertzales further into the political bunker. Typical of
their stance was the nonsensical declaration in their election manifesto
that 'the Spanish State is unmasking itself from the false democracy of
1978 and is showing its true imperialist and fascist face.' EH's
election campaign, the plank of which was the proposal for the creation
of a Basque National Constituent Assembly, was accompanied by a bizarre
poster campaign which featured a (almost pornographic) picture of a
naked pregnant women, accompanied by the slogan 'A Free Nation is about
to be Born'. Of ETA's return to armed actions, and of the breakdown in
the Lizarra process, not a word of criticism or balance sheet was
issued. 

Nevertheless, the battle lines for the election had been drawn. On the
one side was a concerted joint effort on the part of PP and PSOE to
finish off Basque nationalism once and for all. On the other, the Basque
nationalists of PNV and EA (and in another sense EH) standing by, at
least in words, the right of self-determination and a defence of the
traditional Basque nationalist project more clearly than ever.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE COMMUNIST PARTY? SINCE IU SIGNED LIZARRA DOES THAT
MEAN THE CP SUPPORTS SELF-DETERMINATION?

Not exactly. The Spanish Communist Party (PCE) does have a formal
position in favour of 'self-determination'-not only for the Basques but
for all peoples of Spain-but this is situated in a context of what it
calls a 'Federal Spain'. What exactly this latter means is not clear,
but it seems to amount to a greater degree of devolution of powers to
the autonomous communities and a measure of constitutional reform to
facilitate this (including a reform of the Senado-the upper house of the
Spanish parliament-into a kind of committee of the autonomous regions). 
This is a position shared by the Basque Communist Party (EPK), and by
Izquierda Unida. So The PCE's commitment to self-determination is paper
only, and not concrete. However, in Euskadi the situation is a little
more complicated. Unlike in the rest of the Spanish State, where PCE and
IU are practically synonymous, IU-EB-the Basque section of IU-is not
dominated by the Communist Party. The leader of IU-EB, Javier Madrazo,
who was also its candidate for lehendakari in the elections, won the
support of around 57 per cent of the membership of the formation in its
last congress in December 1999 against the candidate of the EPK, Amaia
Martínez. The difference between the independent majority of IU-EB and
the EPK minority is not over formal programme, however, but over what to
do practically in the political situation in the Euskadi. The line of
the EPK is that of 'equidistance', that it is necessary to be equally
critical of all wings of the political spectrum (harsher minds than mine
might use the word 'sectarianism'), and their principal criticism of the
Madrazo current is that it has placed IU-EB within the orbit of Basque
nationalism: specifically, that IU-EB should not have signed Lizarra,
and, after having signed it, they should have withdrawn from it sooner
than they did (IU-EB did not break from Lizarra when ETA ended its
cease-fire but only after the first assassination). The differences are
so strong within IU-EB that the sector critical of Madrazo refused to
let themselves be considered as candidates in the IU-EB lists for the
elections. IU-EB's line has also created tensions between it and the
IU/PCE leadership in Madrid. The Madrid leadership of PCE are among
those who routinely use the word 'fascist' to talk about ETA; the last
leader of IU, general secretary of the PCE Francisco Frutos, has been
harshly critical of the IU-EB leadership in Euskadi. The present
incumbent in Madrid, the Asturian Communist Party leader Gaspar
Llamazares, is softer on the question; but this does not signify a
change of line: Llamazares won the leadership of IU as an 'unofficial'
candidate against that of PCE, Frutos; Llamazares was thus dependent on
the support of all the IU 'malcontents', including, of course, IU-EB. 
As a consequence of this, Llamazares defends the 'autonomy' of the
constituent parts of IU, and, in addition to this, since the leadership
contest within IU was so close, he is still dependent on the support of
IU-EB. What will happen when Llamazares' bloc falls apart-as it
undoubtedly will with time, for it is based on nothing more then
hostility to the old IU leadership and sectarianism towards PSOE-only
time will tell.

SO WHAT HAPPENED IN THE ELECTIONS?

Fundamentally, there are three features to take note of. First, the
turnout was very high: at seventy-eight per cent, significantly higher
than in any other Basque election since the dictatorship (generally, the
turnout in Basque elections is lower than in the rest of the Spanish
State, especially in Spanish State elections). Clearly, the people of
Euskadi recognised the importance of these elections.

Second, there was a very big nationalist vote. This is enormously
encouraging for all those who favour genuine progress and a really
democratic solution to the problems of Euskadi and Euskal Herria. The
clear intention of PP/PSOE was to finish Basque nationalism off once and
for all; the attempt failed in the most spectacular manner: On election
night itself the leaders of PP and PSE in Euskadi looked visibly shaken
by the huge increase in the nationalist vote.

Third, and very important, the EH vote fell significantly compared to
the elections of 1998; in fact this was the lowest abertzale vote in any
election for the Basque parliament. It seems clear that EH was being
punished for the breakdown of Lizarra and ETA's return to the armed
struggle.

SO A MAJORITY OF THE BASQUES VOTED FOR INDEPENDENCE?

That is not so clear. What people voted for, if it can be expressed so
precisely at all, is self-determination.

There is a big danger in posing Basque politics as a dilemma between
independence and remaining in Spain (this is often, for example, how
IU-EB's position comes across: 'yes' to a federal Spain, 'no' to
independence). But look again at the quotation at the beginning of this
report. How many Basques are in favour of independence (a question
repeated frequently in political debates)? We simply don't know, because
no one has ever asked them. And there is no realistic mechanism of
asking them possible within the present constitutional set up: in order
to have, for example, a legal independence referendum in Euskadi, the
Spanish constitution would have first to be altered in such a
fundamental way that it would first be necessary beforehand to hold a
referendum in the Spanish State-and that, whatever else it may be
called, is not self-determination.

In a very interesting opinion poll carried out in Euskadi in January of
this year the following picture was painted. In answer to the question
'¿Es Usted partidario de la autodeterminación para Euskadi?' ('Are you a
supporter of self-determination for Euskadi?'), 45 per cent of the
respondents said 'yes' compared with 40 per cent who said 'no'; but when
asked '¿Quién cree que debería decidir respecto al derecho de
autodeterminación o idependencia de Euskadi?' ('Who do you believe
should decide on Euskadi's right to self-determination or
independence?'), 71 per cent said 'only Basques' against 24 percent who
said 'all Spanish people'. This is either a direct contradiction, or
precisely a reflection of the confused terms in which the debate on
self-determination is routinely carried out.

[...]

~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.