A TURBULENT SUMMER

Askapena's Step by Step Bulletin.

With these lines, Askapena ends the August recess. We warmly greet our readers, we wish to find them with a renewed forces to keep on after the summer, and we encourage them to keep on devoting part of their time to us.

As for us, we renew the information commitment made to the people who receive, read or spread our "Step by Step". They give us an incentive to carry on. The new people who ask us to add their names to our mailing list confirm that our effort is not useless. Our "Step" reproduced in other informative nets reaffirm us in our aim. We will keep on contributing the experience of our people, and all their daily efforts. Our aim is an internationalist one, to share our process experience and analysis in case they are useful for other causes; your critics are also very useful for us. And, the main point, we try to establish internationalist relations on the basis of the daily fight, as a base of our mutual solidarity. Friends, the History belongs to us because we build it by our popular daily fight.

Regarding the Basque situation, the summer is about to end up has been a time of political turbulence. The base of these turbulence is the unsolved Basque question. The Spanish society, who has been dragging a chronic crisis, can not ignore its consequences. The next Steps will analyze this question in depth; today we will make just an approach.


PSOE's turbulent waters

The situation in Nafarroa produce an important crisis. The PSOE did not respect the people's will claiming a change. The PSOE prioritized the Estate interests, putting them before democracy. They ignored the Nafarroa society will, and the one of their own electors. The prioritized their Estate pacts with the PP, and with the system in order to keep the extreme right win UPN governing Nafarroa. As a result, the Spanish unity project become strengthen, but the Basque society realized the deep PSOE's dependence on the Spanish system. The Navarra Socialist Party made a fool of themselves, and their members feel frustrated and upset. Some voices claim more independence from state PSOE.

In their fight against the Basque nationalism, the PSOE encourage among their members belligerent attitudes, which now turn against themselves. The more belligerent against the Basque people groups do not allow the Socialist party to move an inch their from aggressive positions: for instance, Fernando Savater, and the Member of the European Parliament Rosa Diez are firmly against any approach but the military fight against ETA; they reject any attempt to dialogue with the nationalism, and so they have decided to break away from PSOE in order to create a new party.


PP's turbulent waters

Something similar happens to PP. Betting on fascism is not innocuous; at the end it contaminates the ones who do so. Aznar's obsessive effort to eliminate the Basque nationalism even at the price of eliminating the democratic principles finally contaminated the whole party which unconditionally followed him. The PP did not eliminate the Basque national conscience, but inside the party grew the most dictatorial and virulent styles. The leadership of the party is on the more reactionary hands who do not allow the party to get rid of this fascist burden. Any attempt inside the party (for instance, the ones made by the mayor of Madrid) to move towards center-right come up against opposition that block any attempt of internal democratization. The PP party has become a reactionary cavern.


PNV's turbulent waters

The aim of the bourgeois and collaborationist PNV is crystal clear: to keep their special bonds with the Estate bourgeoisie. This is what allowed the PNV during the last thirty years to be the best guarantor of the Imperialist interest in the Basque country. In return, they govern the Basque autonomous region (three Basque western provinces). PNV do not want any change towards sovereignty. Their harmful role in the process, that tried to solve the conflict with dialogue, made it very clear. Their positions made up with the more inflexible Spanish ones, so their work during the process involved asphyxiating the Basque Left who promoted a change in the democratic frame. The only clear aim of PNV is to keep and increase their power to rule the Basque self-governing region institutions.

How to get it? This is the question and the reason of their internal contradictions. The direction of the party believe that the best way to seduce the Basque society is to forget sovereignty messages and adopt a pragmatic attitude: to ally themselves with the Estate and with the constitutional sectors settled in the Basque Country (an strategy that did not have good result in last May elections). A sector of the party think that the best way to get the Basque society confidence is to keep the sovereignty message, which is more in keeping with the Basque will. To support this idea they affirm that president Ibarretxe got good results for his party supporting this idea against Madrid's ones. Both tendencies are no so different in the facts.

But the contradiction extends to the Basque government. The president and the two parties supporting him defend the idea of a referendum in order to make a kind of staging of the right to decide. This view conflicts with the PNV leadership who trys to avoid any unnecessary conflict with the Estate because for them the most important is a total collaboration with it.


Euskal Herria, September 3, 2007.