BASQUE COUNTRY
Bourgeois nationalists sink deeper into the mire
A NEW GOVERNMENT of the Basque autonomous area took office on March 12, based on a coalition between the largest bourgeois nationalist faction, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), and the party for the province of Viskaya, in fact, and only slowly expanded its vision). That character is reflected, among other things, by its opposition to generalized use of the unified form of the Basque language. The conflict between the PNV representatives on the local level and at the level of the autonomous parliament was a prime factor in the split, which followed the June 1986 Spanish state elections.
In the transition from the Francoist dictatorship to parliamentary democracy, the PNV pinned its strategic identity on developing the statute of autonomy granted by the
Spanish centralist social-democratic GERRY FOLEY
The cabinet is headed by Jose Antonio Ardanza of the PNV, as "lehendakari" (premier), flanked by a PSOE vice premier, Ramon Jaurequi. It includes 12 ministers, six named by each party, although the PSOE chose to give the sensitive education portfolio to an independent, Jose Ramon Recalde. (There has been a sharp battle over integration of the Basque-language schools in the state system, which means state support for teaching in Basque.)
The PNV got the ministries of most interest to its local business supporters - Agriculture and Fisheries, Culture and Tourism, Finance, as well as Labor and Social Security, the Interior, and Justice and Autonomous Development. The PSOE took Urban Affairs, Housing and Environment, Health and Consumer Affairs, Industry and Commerce, and Transport. The PNV and the PSOE came to an agreement on a coalition on February 23. The deal was consumated with the election of the lehendakari on February 26. It concluded nearly three months of parliamentary wheeling and dealing in the wake of the November 31 elections to the autonomous Basque parliament.
Putting together a parliamentary majority had been made very difficult by the PNV's split. A new party, Eusko Alkartasuna (Basque Alliance), led by the former PNV lehendakari, Carlos Garaikoetxea, took about twofifths of the former PNV vote, getting 13 seats, as against 17 for the PNV.
The PSOE barely increased its vote, but, as a result of the nationalist split, ended up with the biggest single parliamentary fraction with 19 seats. The revolutionary nationalists linked to ETA, Herri Batasuna, got 13 seats; and Euskadiko Eskerra (Basque Left), a group of nationalist origin that has moved toward social democratic positions, got nine.
International Viewpoint 6 April 1987 party (PSOE).
Given the refusal of HB to make parliamentary deals, there were two possible combinations - PSOE-EEPNV and PSOE-PNV. Both were tried. The first formula did not work. In its February 28 issue, Zutik, the paper of the Fourth Internationalist organization, the Liga Kommunista Iraultzailea (LKI - Revolutionary Communist League), I. Madoz gave the following explanation:
"The failure of the three-way pact was blamed on lack of agreement about social security. But I think the real reason was the subordinate position in which the nationalists were left with respect to the PSOE. The PNV hammered away that the tripartite deal was a fact, denouncing the horse-trading with the PSOE and announcing that it was going into opposition.
"Garaikoetxea's coup in reaching a prior agreement with EE forced the hands of the PSOE and the PNV. The offensive had included an attack on the PNV's provincial power centers (change of the electoral law for local governments) that the PSOE initially supported. The model proposed by Garaikoetxea, in fact, was more like the old methods of making demands •.. than like the recent pacts for running the government."
The PNV is actually a localist party. (It originated as a nationalist new regime. That involved both accommodation and pressure to expand the sphere of the autonomous institutions. The latter aspect has been progressively disappearing.
The PNV started to run into trouble when Madrid started taking back its concessions to national rights, with the passage of the Law on the Harmonization of the Autonomization of the Autonomous Authorities (LOAPA), adopted on February 23, 1982. It had the insensitivity, or the bad luck, to form its coalition with the PSOE, which clearly marks another major retreat, on the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the LOAPA. Statute of autonomy
The bourgeois nationalist party made its first big step back in December 1984, when it concluded a legislative pact with the PSOE in order to break the deadlock that had existed in the autonomous parliament.
In order to make that shift, the PNV had to remove Garaikoetxea, opening the crisis that led to the split.
In return for the transfer of some administrative powers to the Basque autonomous government, the PNV moderated its opposition to the central government and took a more bureaucratic approach to the statute of autonomy. It turned away from the potential uses of the statute to
Demonstration in support of Basque refugees (DR)
anny bact
ERREFLXIATUAK rUSKADiN LiBRE
expand the national rights of the Basque people.
Thus, the PNV got the support of the PSOE in the Basque parliament, enabling it to pass budgets and laws that it otherwise could not have gotten through. At the same time, the deal opened up the way for the PSOE government to step up repres sion against the revolutionary nationalists.
The pact, however, was only a modus vivendi, and not an outright coalition The oint overment of coalition. The joint government of the PSOE and the PNV thus marks a new stage in the betrayal of the bourgeois nationalists. The virtual disappearance of the right-wing Spanish parties in Euskadi, for instance, reflects the fact that the anti-nationalists have thrown their support behind the social democrats.
Zutik wrote: "This new government is going to increase all the frustrations of the Basque people. It was born under the shadow of the greatest unpopularity and the greatest political and ethical discredit. Nothing can be expected from it but a deepening of the most rotten and unpopular aspects of the previous government.
"We are not suggesting that any other pact would have been better. By no means. In the situation in Euskadi, any agreement that repects the constitution [of the Spanish state] and the statute [of autonomy] could only be a benefit for the central government and a source of national dissatisfaction."
The decline of the PNV has gone hand in hand with the growth of revolutionary nationalism. Against the background of the treacherous parliamentary horse-trading by the bourgeois nationalists, HB stood a jailed young activist facing 64 years in prison, Yoldi, for the post of lehendakari. Zutik commented:
"The presence of Yoldi in the Basque parliament has a great political significance. It is a symbol of an intransigent and honest struggle -although we do not share his outlook. Yoldi can be a tribune exposing this new swindle of the Basque people by the craven nationalist parties. Paradoxically, his voice may be the only one that speaks freely in this parliament. The new tactic that Herri Batasuna is starting of attending the parliament is proving very positive."
This prediction seems to have been born out by the impact of Yoldi's speech: "I have come from prison, and I am going back there. But there are a lot of us, and there will be more and more." But it remains to be seen if HB will develop political tactics enabling it to maintain and extend its moral authority. O 4