Acting President of the Government Pedro Sánchez will meet this Friday with the spokesmen of EH Bildu in Congress and the Senate.JPGANDUL (EFE)
This Friday, the PP launched a coordinated campaign against Pedro Sánchez’s meeting with the spokesmen of EH Bildu. On the social network, party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo tweeted: “Pedro Sánchez’s pact with Bildu is a pact of shame.” Secretary General Cuca Gamarra called a press conference in which she declared: “Today is a black day for the history of democracy.” One of those days that Democrats never thought we could survive. Not long ago, the mother of a PSOE terror victim said that we would see things that would make our blood run cold. Without a doubt, today is the day.”
The PP’s position is based on the premise that EH Bildu is ETA: they denounce that it is “a party that refuses to cooperate in the investigation of 365 murders”, to “condemn terrorism” and the Ongi Etorri, to ban homages to ETA members when leaving prison.
Is EH Bildu comparable to ETA?
In May 2011, the Constitutional Court approved the participation of Bildu-Eusko Alkartasuna/Alternatiba in the elections, unlike previous years for other brands such as Batasuna or Euskal Herritarrok. The judgment states: “In this case, there are no elements proving the existence of personal ties, financial ties or material support between ETA and the banned Batasuna party and the coalition.” (…) “The nationalist left has an ideological expression “has neither been banned from our system nor could it become so without violating the pluralistic principle and fundamental rights”; “Ideologies are absolutely free in the Spanish constitutional order and must find in public power the first guarantee of their compensation, which those who use illegal or violent means to promote and defend them cannot seek. And they use terrorist intimidation to achieve this.” Their objectives.” “In this sense, it cannot be ignored that, as an indispensable condition for compliance with such a condition, all coalition candidates have signed a document, point 9 of which reads as follows : “The obligation to act solely and exclusively by means and methods is firm.” .political, peaceful and democratic, which includes resistance by all lawfully available means to any act or activity that constitutes aggression or violation of a human right and involves the use of violence to achieve political goals.” A statement with a similar tenor was considered by this court to be sufficient evidence to convict of terrorism.”
As for the Ongi Etorri, the leader of the Abertzale Left, Arnaldo Otegi, publicly rejected this type of honor in 2021. In November of the same year, the group of ETA prisoners called for their release due to the “pain” they caused to the victims. The Collective of Victims of Terrorism (Covite), one of the associations that has fought the most against counterterrorism, has a radicalization observatory from which a report is prepared every year on episodes of support for the gang. There will be no Etorri-Ongi in 2023.
The contradictions of Pedro Sánchez
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As the PP recalled in a video on the networks this Friday, the PSOE leader had assured that he would never agree with EH Bildu. He said it in a 2015 interview on Navarra Television. In 2016, when he declared that he would not even meet with them, and in 2019 already from La Moncloa – “they do not agree with Bildu” –. During the campaign before the parliamentary elections last July, Pedro Sánchez was asked in various interviews about this change of position in his relationship with the left-wing Abertzale party. In EL PAÍS he replied: “The distance that the PSOE has with Bildu is miserable. We do not have a government agreement with Bildu. We have agreed to pension reform with many political parties, including Bildu, but also PNV, ERC and Podemos. And for example, one of the government’s main commitments was not fulfilled, namely the repeal of the so-called gagging law, because we did not compromise on some of Bildu’s and ERC’s demands. We approved the labor reform, with ERC and Bildu opposing it and Ciudadanos voting for it.”
The Collective of Victims of Terrorism (Covite) expressed this Friday its discomfort with the meeting: “Mertxe Aizpurua [portavoz de EH Bildu] He may be the leader of a legal political party (we already know that its legalization was one of the conditions for stopping killing), but what has shaped and will shape his biography is that he ran a newspaper in which he was active #ETA “He published his dark threats.” Mertxe Aizpurua was sentenced to a year in prison in 1984 – when she was 24 – as technical director of the Euskal Herria magazine Punto y Hora for promoting terrorism. The ruling noted that the headline of an interview “constitutes, with its expressions and context, at the same time a justification for dedicating the issue of the magazine to various previously deceased ETA fighters and a revolutionary proclamation in defense of the struggle of one.” armed organization and a tribute to its missing militants.”
The contradictions of the PP
ETA announced the “final cessation of armed activities” in October 2011 and was finally dissolved in 2018. In October 2021, the President of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, declared: “ETA is more alive than ever because it is anchored in the institutions.” Last May he emphasized: “ETA is alive and in power.” Victims of terrorism showed that they rejected these words. Pablo Romero, son of one murdered by the gang, pleaded with him: “Spare me the pain of seeing that ETA is still alive in your mouth.” “I ask you, almost out of charity, whether you are the victims of terrorism, really want to respect those who fight for memory and justice.”
The PP constantly accuses the government of “humiliating” ETA’s victims, but the people have ignored the group’s demands on many occasions, for example by publicly reprimanding and demanding that the slogan “Let Txapote vote for you” not be used . which was heard again this Thursday at the military parade during the national holiday on October 12th. Ayuso disregarded the criticism of Consuelo Ordóñez, sister of PP councilor Gregorio Ordóñez, assassinated by ETA and president of the Collective of Victims of Terrorism (Covite), which warned last May about the presence on the island of those convicted of blood crimes lists. from EH Bildu – and managed to get her to resign. The reason for the contempt of popular leaders towards the sister of a politician from their ranks murdered by ETA is that Ordóñez has repeatedly accused the PP of “taking advantage of the victims”: “My brother’s party has deceived us and is using us.” We do not perform election calculations. We founded Covite in 1998, the year in which Aznar approved contacts with the “Basque Liberation Movement,” he explained in an interview with EL PAÍS last May.
Ordóñez has also pointed out the PP’s hypocrisy when it denounced the approach of ETA prisoners to prisons in the Basque Country during the Socialist administration. Under the government of José María Aznar, when, unlike today, the gang was still active and killing, it reached 426. In 1998, a year after the brutal murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco, the then president announced that he authorized contacts with what He called it “the Basque liberation movement” and declared that he was ready for “forgiveness and generosity” if the gang finally laid down their arms.
Last May, PP Senator Pedro Rollán – current President of the Upper House – assured about the housing law: “It is a bombproof pact.” The foundations of this law were built on the ashes of the Hipercor shopping center, with 21 dead, four of them children; on the rubble of the Plaza de la República Moroccana, where 12 Civil Guardsmen were murdered; on the twisted iron of the Zaragoza barracks, where eleven people died.” Because? Because EH-Bildu voted for the standard. If one follows the argument that every law supported by the nationalist left is “based” on terrorism, the PP was an accomplice, a necessary cooperation partner, for example by voting in the same direction as Bildu to approve the minimum income.
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