Spanish State Repression Has Second Thoughts?

international | anti-capitalism | news report Wednesday May 27, 2009 09:58 by Cormac Mac Gall - None

Spanish supreme court overturns banning of left-wing political platform

The decision of the Spanish supreme court to ban the electoral platform of INTERNATIONALIST INITIATIVE – for the Solidarity of the the Peoples (II-SP) was overturned by the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal, leaving Minister of the Interior Rupalcaba with egg on his face . Fifty candidates of the left-wing platform get the go-ahead to stand in the European Parliamentary elections.

In what was literally an eleventh-hour judgement, the highest court in the Spanish state, the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal, overturned the decision of the Supreme Court to ban the II-SP on the basis that its programme was “putting forward the politics of the Basque pro-Independence Left” and was “a continuation of Batasuna”. Batasuna was banned in 2003 on police allegations that it was “acting for ETA”, the armed Basque organisation which emerged during Franco's regime and which has been waging war on the Spanish state).

The judgement at 11.45 pm on Friday, fifteen minutes before the deadline for the decision was due to expire, is a serious rebuff to the Spanish government and in particular to the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Rubalcaba, who had spoken publicly at length to justify the ban. His other colleagues of the governing Partido Socialista Obrera de Espana (Spanish Labour Party) are now maintaining a discreet silence. This is the first time since the process of banning Basque left-wing parties and organisations was begun in 2002 by the Partido Popular (Spanish Conservative Party) and continued by the PSOE that the Constitutional Court has overturned a decision to ban a party.

CALLS FOR BANNING OF THE ELECTION PLATFORM
The II-SP platform was launched very recently and immediately led to a clamour from Spanish right-wing politicians and media to have them banned. They were then declared illegal by the Supreme Tribunal (a special Spanish state non-jury court) on the basis of police statements that the platform had been “infiltrated by the Basque pro-independence Left”, evidence which the platforms lawyers were not permitted to see in order to challenge it.

The court, believed to have been by a majority of eleven to five, judged that the platform was pushing “Basque pro-Independence Left policies” and that II-SP was “a continuation of Batasuna” and therefore, according to the Spanish state, ultimately linked to ETA. The only 'evidence' for this, apart from police statements to that effect “based on their intelligence gathered”, was the presence of three Basque movement sympathisers of non-Basque background among the fifty candidates chosen to stand for election on II-SP's platform. One of those was Spain's foremost and most prolific dramatist and also author, Alfonso Sastre, who now lives in the Basque Country.

Spanish courts generally accept unverified police statements against Basque activists as evidence and give judgement accordingly. Batasuna had itself been declared illegal in a similar process in 2003 and its leadership put on trial. Earlier this year the Democracy 3 Million platform for the government of the three south-western Basque provinces had suffered a similar fate (despite which it received 101,000 'spoiled votes'). The reversal of the Supreme Tribunal's decision to ban the II-SP by the Constitutional Tribunal was the first such event since the process of banning Basque political, media and social organisations began in 2002. There was speculation that the court's judges feared a successful challenge in the European Court as this was the banning of a platform for elections to the European Parliament. Nevertheless, the late hour of the decision overturning the ban suggests a struggle within the Spanish authorities or at least indicates how difficult they found it to come to that decision.

LEFT-WING AND DEMOCRATIC MANIFESTO
The 6-point Manifesto of the II-SP calls for social justice (“let those who caused the crisis pay for it”), democratic freedoms, and end to gender discrimination, full political rights (including sovereignty for the Basque Country) and opposition to a Europe of Capital and of militarisation. The platform's manifesto also declares its solidarity with struggles against imperialism and for social justice such as those in Latin America and in the Middle East and “in particular with the heroic struggle of the Palestinian people”.

The II-SP will now field fifty candidates for the European Parliament elections, members of left socialist and separatist parties and independent political or cultural activists in different arenas. They will be standing in constituencies across the Spanish state, including Aragon, Asturias, Basque Country, Castille, Catalonia, Galicia and the Canaries.

SOLIDARITY COMMITTEE'S STATEMENT
The Dublin Irish Basque Solidarity Committee in a statement welcomed the move. “It is high time there was an end to the trend, within the Spanish state, of banning political parties whose ideas or objectives are inconvenient or abhorrent to the Government in Madrid of whichever Spanish political party" a spokesperson stated.

“This guilt by association of ideas that was used to ban the II-SP is in fact the same kind of reasoning that the Spanish state in recent years has used to outlaw four political parties, three youth organisations, two campaigning organisations, two newspapers, a radio station and many different social organisations," added the spokesperson.

“What kind of democracy is this, where to be politically opposed to the Spanish state and to organise around that is to be equated with 'terrorism', to have one's house and place of work searched, to be under surveillance, to be arrested and all too often tortured and then jailed for extremely long prison terms in atrocious conditions?" The spokesperson continued: "What kind of democracy bans many demonstrations or bans individuals from calling for legal protests and then attacks the demonstrators with batons and round after round of plastic bullets?

“This decision clears the way for a real alternative to be presented in the elections to the European Parliament.”