Edition 526
More of the same The municipal election campaign opened officially at midnight last Thursday, May 10th, and it was obvious from the declarations of the leaders of three political parties with national coverage - the Socialists (PSOE), the Partido Popular (PP) and
Izquierda Unida (IU) - that they are being approached as a general election rather than a local one. Most people are probably under the impression that the campaign began weeks ago, as posters sprang up everywhere. However, that was the pre-campaign period during which the parties sorted out their voting lists in each municipality and went through the bureaucratic process of getting registered. Now they can tour the streets of every village, town and city in their cars, blaring out their promises through loudspeakers, and hold political rallies. At a midnight rally in Madrid last Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega appealed to young people to vote for the Socialists "to change the course of the cities and regional governments like they changed the course of the nation with their votes in the last general election". She mentioned the government's achievements since March 2004 - the laws on gay marriage, gender equality, domestic violence being prominent among them - and particularly stressed Spain's withdrawal from the war in Iraq. It was a combination of the train bombings in Madrid just three days before the election on March 14th - allegedly by Islamists protesting Spain's support of the UK and the UK in Iraq - and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's campaign promise to bring the troops home that brought out the anti-war vote - mainly young people inclined not to vote in a normal election - which gave the Socialists their unexpected victory over the Partido Popular. While the memory of the 191 dead and more than 1,700 wounded is still alive, it remains to be seen if the tragedy will have the same effect now. The Socialists have remorselessly beaten the PP with this March 11th stick during the past three years and there is the danger that the general public just might be getting tired of hearing the same old song. Meanwhile the PP is playing on another fear - the government's "giving in" to the Basque terrorist group ETA in its determination to get a peace agreement before next year's general election. Even as the government denies the charges and calls the PP liars, photos of ETA terrorist Inaki De Juana Chaos walking around the grounds of a hospital in San Sebastian have outraged more than a few Spaniards. De Juana was sentenced to 3,000 year's in jail for his part in the deaths of 25 people when he led the ETA commando group in Madrid in the mid-eighties. Thanks to legal loopholes, his lawyers managed to get this reduced last year. He then went on two hunger strikes and was finally sent to San Sebastian to recover from his "ordeal" a few weeks ago, before spending the rest of his sentence under house arrest for "humanitarian reasons". Unfortunately for the government, De Juana - allegedly on the brink of death after some 115 days on hunger strike - walked from the ambulance that took him from Madrid to San Sebastian, looking not very much the worse for wear. Since then he has left the hospital on at least two occasions with his girlfriend but after the press made a big fuss, he has since been confined to the hospital grounds. Last week, Unionist leader Ian Paisley finally sat down with Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness to govern Northern Ireland after a peace process that became official with the so-called Good Friday peace agreement brokered by the then US president, Bill Clinton, in 1998. Sr Zapateros' critics seized on the event to drive home what they've been telling him for months - you can't reach a lasting peace agreement in a matter of months, as he seems to believe. And ETA itself warned last week that if its political wing, the banned Batasuna party, does not participate in the May 27th elections, "there will be a T-5", a reference to the December 30th bombing of the Terminal 4 (T-4) car park at Madrid's Barajas airport, in which two people died. While the other two parties are playing on old fears of war and old-new fears of terrorists, IU general secretary Gaspar Llamazares is concentrating on an even more topical scourge - urban corruption and land speculation. He has signed before a notary a commitment to guarantee that if elected, IU candidates will give priority to cleaning up local councils Sr Llamazares had previously offered to sign a "democratic agreement against speculation" with the other two main parties, without success, and is now offering to work with local ecologists and social groups to reach the IU's immediate aims: the use of renewable energies in public buildings, measures to save water and to make it obligatory for 50% of all new housing to be "protected", that is, economically accessible for the poorer sectors of the population. In the last local elections the IU got the third largest number of votes - 6% from nearly 1,400,000 voters, which gave it 2,198 councillors around the country. It will be interesting to see if its environment-friendly message will improve on that this time around. Next week: a closer look at the smaller local parties in Malaga province.
More of the same The municipal election campaign opened officially at midnight last Thursday, May 10th, and it was obvious from the declarations of the leaders of three political parties with national coverage - the Socialists (PSOE), the Partido Popular (PP) and
Izquierda Unida (IU) - that they are being approached as a general election rather than a local one. Most people are probably under the impression that the campaign began weeks ago, as posters sprang up everywhere. However, that was the pre-campaign period during which the parties sorted out their voting lists in each municipality and went through the bureaucratic process of getting registered. Now they can tour the streets of every village, town and city in their cars, blaring out their promises through loudspeakers, and hold political rallies. At a midnight rally in Madrid last Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega appealed to young people to vote for the Socialists "to change the course of the cities and regional governments like they changed the course of the nation with their votes in the last general election". She mentioned the government's achievements since March 2004 - the laws on gay marriage, gender equality, domestic violence being prominent among them - and particularly stressed Spain's withdrawal from the war in Iraq. It was a combination of the train bombings in Madrid just three days before the election on March 14th - allegedly by Islamists protesting Spain's support of the UK and the UK in Iraq - and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's campaign promise to bring the troops home that brought out the anti-war vote - mainly young people inclined not to vote in a normal election - which gave the Socialists their unexpected victory over the Partido Popular. While the memory of the 191 dead and more than 1,700 wounded is still alive, it remains to be seen if the tragedy will have the same effect now. The Socialists have remorselessly beaten the PP with this March 11th stick during the past three years and there is the danger that the general public just might be getting tired of hearing the same old song. Meanwhile the PP is playing on another fear - the government's "giving in" to the Basque terrorist group ETA in its determination to get a peace agreement before next year's general election. Even as the government denies the charges and calls the PP liars, photos of ETA terrorist Inaki De Juana Chaos walking around the grounds of a hospital in San Sebastian have outraged more than a few Spaniards. De Juana was sentenced to 3,000 year's in jail for his part in the deaths of 25 people when he led the ETA commando group in Madrid in the mid-eighties. Thanks to legal loopholes, his lawyers managed to get this reduced last year. He then went on two hunger strikes and was finally sent to San Sebastian to recover from his "ordeal" a few weeks ago, before spending the rest of his sentence under house arrest for "humanitarian reasons". Unfortunately for the government, De Juana - allegedly on the brink of death after some 115 days on hunger strike - walked from the ambulance that took him from Madrid to San Sebastian, looking not very much the worse for wear. Since then he has left the hospital on at least two occasions with his girlfriend but after the press made a big fuss, he has since been confined to the hospital grounds. Last week, Unionist leader Ian Paisley finally sat down with Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness to govern Northern Ireland after a peace process that became official with the so-called Good Friday peace agreement brokered by the then US president, Bill Clinton, in 1998. Sr Zapateros' critics seized on the event to drive home what they've been telling him for months - you can't reach a lasting peace agreement in a matter of months, as he seems to believe. And ETA itself warned last week that if its political wing, the banned Batasuna party, does not participate in the May 27th elections, "there will be a T-5", a reference to the December 30th bombing of the Terminal 4 (T-4) car park at Madrid's Barajas airport, in which two people died. While the other two parties are playing on old fears of war and old-new fears of terrorists, IU general secretary Gaspar Llamazares is concentrating on an even more topical scourge - urban corruption and land speculation. He has signed before a notary a commitment to guarantee that if elected, IU candidates will give priority to cleaning up local councils Sr Llamazares had previously offered to sign a "democratic agreement against speculation" with the other two main parties, without success, and is now offering to work with local ecologists and social groups to reach the IU's immediate aims: the use of renewable energies in public buildings, measures to save water and to make it obligatory for 50% of all new housing to be "protected", that is, economically accessible for the poorer sectors of the population. In the last local elections the IU got the third largest number of votes - 6% from nearly 1,400,000 voters, which gave it 2,198 councillors around the country. It will be interesting to see if its environment-friendly message will improve on that this time around. Next week: a closer look at the smaller local parties in Malaga province.
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