argia.eus
INPRIMATU
Festival of democracy
Ane Ablanedo Larrion 2023ko ekainaren 07a
ANTTON OLARIAGA

Spanish citizens have been invited in recent days to the elections, to the members of boards, parliaments or municipalities, to the renewal of these institutions, and now all of them, in the analyses, in the calculations, are in the hands of who the power will fall, with whom it will achieve alliances, with whom to form governments. The process seems clear: the election of preferred candidates, the vote and the majority victory, point. What drawbacks can you find? It is the feast of democracy.

For the Basques, voting is not as innocent or neutral a gesture as it might seem. We should not forget that we are not Spaniards, but a dominated people living under Spanish occupation, and that, of course, everything changes. To begin with, because here we cannot say that there is democracy, and also by definition. Democracy is the power of the people, and since the people do not have to be understood in the abstract, but in the sense of the individual peoples, we should only understand and use that word as a synonym for the power of the Basques. And that is our problem, which France and Spain have hijacked us, which they have forcefully assumed our power.

Furthermore, the parameter of democratisation of a system is to verify respect for fundamental rights. Here we have been violated the right of self-determination (independence), which is the first of these rights, and the condition of all others is the imperialist, and therefore undemocratic, regime. Being able to vote or hold elections does not make a system itself democratic. That is clear.

The fact of being able to vote or to call elections does not make itself a democratic system

Then, of course, there are elections and elections. Not everyone is the same. On the one hand, there are elections to institutions with real power, to the parliaments of Spain and France, which are the only real parliaments, because they have legislative power. The others, who are part of the autonomous administration, have, in general, only the function of approving and executing the laws of that central power.

That in the general elections in Spain and France we never have to be present, it seems to me an assertion that does not require too many explanations, because the first article of the Spanish constitution states that there is only the Spanish people, and radically denies the others that are dominated. What can come out of it if it is not to accept, acknowledge, justify the oppression of the Basques, and what is more serious, consider it democratic and legitimise it? They have to make a full and nuanced boycott. And in others?

Bearing in mind that these "institutions" are only satellites of the general, central and colonial Spanish (or French) administration, and that they do not have real independent power, it would be a question of asking whether participation in them as Peoples contributes or not to our objectives of national liberation. And finally, yes, it could be trying to use these foreign "organizations" as a resonance box of our national claim, why not?

To do so, we Basques should go together, in the full formulation of national union, forming all the democratic forces that would make up the Resistance, around a unique strategic objective: national independence and the restoration of our State.

We are far away, on the opposite side, on another planet.

That's why I, meanwhile, at home.