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NEWS & LETTERS, April 2004Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarrySpain's voters repudiate Bush, Al QaedaIn a stunning electoral upset, Spanish voters returned the Socialist Party to power on March 14. It won a solid parliamentary majority after voters repudiated the way the rightist government of Jose Maria Aznar had attempted to manipulate public opinion in the wake of a horrific terrorist attack. On March 11, three days before the election, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists with ties to Al Qaeda placed bombs on four Madrid commuter trains, killing 190 and wounding over 1,400. Along with the 2002 attacks in Bali, these were the most deadly anywhere since September 11, 2001. The March 14 vote was also a repudiation of Bush’s Iraq war and the Aznar government’s support of it despite opposition to the war by as many as 90% of the Spanish people, according to some polls. In addition, it showed great political intelligence in that people refused the expected knee-jerk response to terror of rallying around the existing powers. Aznar and the conservative candidate for prime minister, Jose Mariano Rajoy, refused for three days to acknowledge obvious evidence pointing to Islamic fundamentalists, a dozen of whom have now been arrested. Instead they attempted to blame ETA, a Basque separatist group. Aznar evidently believed that if the attacks were linked to Al Qaeda, this could focus the elections on the highly unpopular war in Iraq. On March 12, some 11 million people took to the streets, chanting "No to terrorism." Then, as government efforts to blame ETA began to wear thin, thousands of youth demonstrated spontaneously on March 13. They accused the government of manipulation, chanting "Don’t play with our dead." Finally on election day, refusing to be intimidated by terror, a far larger than usual number turned out to vote. In his post-election statements, incoming Socialist Party Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero continued to refer to the Iraq war and occupation as a "disaster," promising to pull out Spanish troops by June unless they were put under UN command. He has also made clear his determination to combat terrorism. Pro-war U.S. commentators have accused the Spanish people of appeasing terrorism by voting out the conservatives. New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote on March 16 that they had elected a government "whose policies are more to Al Qaeda’s liking." These commentators seldom expressed sympathy for those killed and wounded on March 11, a curious attitude for those claiming to lead opposition to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. What do such commentators think about New York City, whose people so bravely withstood the September 11 attacks, but also demonstrated 100,000-strong on March 20 on an international day of protest against the war in Iraq involving millions? What of the Italian people who demonstrated against terrorism on March 18 and against the Iraq war on March 20? Are all but the Bush neo-conservatives appeasers of Al Qaeda? In fact the Spanish election results turned on many factors. The conservatives had consistently manipulated the state-run television stations, prompting a criticism by the Council of Europe for their biased coverage of the June 2002 general strike. They also mishandled the Prestige oil tanker disaster of 2002. Also Rajoy arrogantly refused to debate Rodriguez Zapatero before the election. As Jose Antich wrote in the left of center paper La Vanguardia, March 15: "The electorate has punished Aznar... because of the authoritarian way he governed. His decision to involve Spain in the war in Iraq, together with the feeling he was hiding information about the Madrid attacks, sent his party to the grave." |
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