posted
Yes Scott, I heard that, and from my understanding, too many talking head political anaylsists are still assuming the massive issue of Iraq did not weigh more heavily on the election than the bombings. I think once some polls are done to ask people what made them vote the way they did in Spain it will put this fear of "bowing to terrorism" to rest.
posted
I think the situation was that people were already widely against the government's participation in Iraq, but that the terrorist attack merely caused them to realize how important that issue is - and made them come out to vote against it.
Prior to the attacks the old regime had the lead, but it was only a slight lead.
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
The problem here, Tres, is that no one appears to know jack.
What do you do when your experts disagree? Obviously, Brian's information cannot be right if the information I've provided is ALSO right-- they're contradictory.
No compromise, buddy. Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote: 90% of the Spanish people opposed going into Iraq in the first place and this is their first window of opportunity to replace the government that did not do what they wanted.
Lets all take a deep breath and repeat this phrase: "The change of government had little to do with the bombings, and more to the long-standing disenfranchisement of the Spanish people."
So are you saying that any time government leaders decide that they have to take a stand on some issue against the will of the people, they're disenfranchising someone? Not to say it should be done on a whim, but there have been known to be good reasons. And sometimes, reasons that appear to be good until it's too late.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Not at all. But you appear to be saying that there should be no consequences for politicians who ignore their constituents.
"...the Spanish people caved in to the demands of terrorism."
So as long as terrorism persists, Spaniards should vote for the party in power. Doesn't give much incentive for the party in power to reduce terrorism, does it?
"...according to NPR, the Socialists only won by a small margin."
Adding together and using only the votes cast for Socialists and Popularists, the Socialists won ~54% vs ~46% for Popularists. There was a gain of 39seats by the Socialists, and a loss of 35seats by the Popularists. The left-of-center Esquerra Republicana Catalunya gained 7seats and Nafarroa Bai gained 1seat. Therefore, at least an additional 12seats were lost by the right-of-center parties which might have allied themselves with the Popularists.
"In fact, a day prior to the attacks, the Popular Party was expected to win, hands down."
Polls conducted a month before the Spanish elections showed that the Popularists could reasonably hope to keep their absolute majority. Aznar himself was a drag on the Popular party: voters tended to give less credit to the Popularist legislators for involvement in Iraq than to Aznar. But Iraq was "happening over there" and therefore a lesser influence on voter preferences. However, the world's most massive oil tanker spill hitting the beaches of Spain could be laid directly on the choices made by Aznar.
The polls during the month before March11th also showed that voter preferences were shifting in the Socialist direction, ie the momentum was toward the Socialists. The Popularists could still reasonably expect to keep control of parliament, but the absolute majority was in danger of being eroded: ie the Popularists might have had to forge alliances with minor parties to maintain parliamentary control.
"Why the difference?"
There was another factor that most people overlooked: raw data collected for polls are massaged in an attempt to reflect what will actually happen on election day. eg If 50% of young voters say that they intend to vote, and 40% of young voters said they were going to vote in the last elections but only 20% voted according to exit polls, then the pollsters will halve that 50% and assume that only 25% of young people will vote in the upcoming election.
The big surprise of the Spanish election was that instead of the expectable (from the 2000 election) 63.8% voter turnout, there was a 10.7% absolute increase to 74.5% voter turnout*. The greatest increase being in young voters because they were the least likely to vote from results of the last major elections.
The results ought to give hint to young voters that they shouldn't believe the Big Lie -- both major parties are the same -- promulgated to discourage participation (or at least meaningful participation) in elections.
Although you have stated that the Aznar gov't was losing in the polls before the bombing, the article you linked to did not provide any evidence of that. Please provide a source that states specifically that they were losing in the polls prior to the bombings. My link specifically states that the Aznar gov't was leading in the polls prior to the bombings.
"polls also suggest it might lose the absolute majority won in 2000 by Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar." is the quote from Brian's article. The "suggest" and "might" part of it could be simply interpretation of a trend, but does not indicate who is actually in the lead. Brian's information is not wrong - just taken slightly out of context. This resolves the apparent contradiction of the sources.
Posts: 1423 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Also, I earlier posted that Spain will probably keep it's 1300 troops in Iraq if security is handed over to the UN or Iraqis by June 30th.
Well I was wrong. Spain announced that it is taking its 1300 troops out of Iraq by June 30th. No conditions.
Posts: 1423 | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:So are you saying that any time government leaders decide that they have to take a stand on some issue against the will of the people, they're disenfranchising someone?
I have a hard time figuring out why you don't think this is so. After all, in elected governments the whole idea of being enfranchised—meaning having voting participation rights—is the whole reason why those officials are in office. Go against the people while in office is a betrayal to that trust. Just because the action may or may not be favorablein your opinion doesn't make it less of a disenfranchising act.
Posts: 779 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Well, John, are you saying that public officials should discriminate against minorities if that is what the public wants? That they should get rid of the fifth amendment if people are tired of hearing suspects refuse to incriminate themselves? Etc, etc...
The majority is not always in the right, and the US Constitution, at least, is designed to reflect that. Sometimes, in the name of justice or mercy or some higher good it becomes necessary to ignore the immediate wishes of the voters.
The flip side is that officials who do this should be prepared to be voted out when their time comes around, if the greater good hasn't materialized yet and changed the people's minds. I'm disappointed in the Spaniards, but they have every right to do what they did. I just hope for their sake that this decision doesn't come back to haunt them, or the rest of us.
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quote:Well, John, are you saying that public officials should discriminate against minorities if that is what the public wants?
No, but it's still disenfranchisement.
quote:That they should get rid of the fifth amendment if people are tired of hearing suspects refuse to incriminate themselves?[quote] No, but it's still disenfranchisement
[quote]The majority is not always in the right, and the US Constitution, at least, is designed to reflect that. Sometimes, in the name of justice or mercy or some higher good it becomes necessary to ignore the immediate wishes of the voters.
Can you show an example in US history where that has held strong with the government not undergoing a change? You see, I'm not talking right or wrong here, I'm saying your idea on what is disenfranchisement or not is incorrect. In fact, fighting against disenfranchisement is the basis on which this nation (the US) was pretty much founded upon. It's the basis for many social reforms. However, in every case, it was still disenfranchisement. That's where you are in error.
The vast majority of the Spanish people felt angered and betrayed by their government's decisions regarding the Iraq war. Whether it was right or wrong of the government to go against those wishes isn't what I was arguing. It was whether or not the people were disenfranchised or not.
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John, by my understanding of the term disenfranchisement, it occurs only when people are not allowed to vote at the specified time, or when their actual votes are ignored. A case could be made, for instance, that people who dimpled their chads in the last US presidential election, and whose attempt at voting was thus not counted, were disenfranchised.
As far as I know, no head of state anywhere is required by law to listen to the polls and take it as a referendum on what he must do next. If he doesn't, he must be prepared for voter anger and the possibility of being voted out, but it is not disenfranchisement.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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JNSB, fine if you need a source I'm sure you can find one, for now, your own sources will suffice. You seem to forget that even the links you have provided have sided with my claims rather than yours. The difference lies in the intracacies of the parliamentary system which you seem to be ignoring, either that or you have completely misunderstood me from the get-go.
Posts: 369 | Registered: Nov 2003
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Mabus, that's a very loose definition of disenfranchising voters, and you're entitled to it, but when a leader disregards their people completely, they are no longer serving the people.
Posts: 779 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Disenfranchisement simply means not being able to vote. Its undemocratic when elected leaders act against the will of the voters. The purpose, however, of representative government is to act in the people's stead and in their interest. If 99% of people opposed the Iraq war but it was truly in their interest then the representatives are acting as they should in a representative democracy.
The Spanish people's actions have encouraged terrorism by saying that attack and they'll retreat. Keep on attacking and Spain doesn't exist. The only successful way to deal with terrorism is to send a message that the purpose, to create terror, isn't fulfilled. Israel was used as an example earlier. While it is true that there are still terrorist attacks even with an Israeli hardline you have to take into consideration the massive amounts of terrorist attacks that have not occured because of Israeli pressure.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Terrorism won elections here in Spain. But I have to say it was because two kinds of bombs, explosive and mass-meda.
If you only look at the polls, they vere giving the government party an easy victory the very same week, before the bombs. If Socialists were going to win because of governments policy towards Irak (and worst of all here, pro-American, in a country historically anti-American) it would have shown on that polls. Don't you think so ?
After the bombs, you know what happened.
Find 7 differences.
1-Bombs caused fear, sorrow, anger.
2-First, all the contry thought it was an ETA attack. They tried something like this on December 24th. They use trap-bombs to kill security forces. Well...to make it short, it had ETA's name on it.
3-Government said it so.
4-A few hours later they said police had find a van with detonators and a cassette containing educational Koran versicles.
5-Socialists, and a mass-media empire behind them called PRISA, owner of, just as an example, "El Pais" - newspaper- and "Cadena Ser" -radio- and... a huge amount of coverage, launched a campaign against government party, consisting of A) Accusations of hiding information - and B) Pointing them as the ones to be blamed because of their involvemente in Irak invassion. Underlining Al Qaeda as the guilty one, being associated to the government foreign policy. ( Irak and USA )
6-Anonymous demonstrations against government party...responding to veiled suggestions from the PRISA side. In this anonymous demonstrations we could see a couple of well known politics ...guess to wich party they came from ? Independentists and socialists.
7-Is legally banned to broadcast any political propagand from 12.00 am until 8.00 pm, supposedly to let people think in peace about what they are going to vote. PRISA didn't stopped, and socialist representatives either. They kept on saying the government were hiding information because they preferred ETA as a responsible of the attack, and thus making them seem responsible of the deaths because their policy towards Irak.
And, in a country were indepndentists parties use every opportunity they find to weaken a gevernment strongly against such independence claims...they joined the festivities from the first day.
To make a summary of this, this coordinated campaign against goverment directed people's fear and anger against their political enemy, pointing them as the guilty ones.
And, if you wonder what this new government's policy towards terrorism might be, I just can say that before elections they joined forces with an independentist catalonian party, and that one of its members, the president of this independentist party, negotiated with ETA a terrorist protectorate for catalonia. No one on his party condemned this. Socialist pary condemned this...but they keep on joining forces.
And, our brand new president first political move (showing he knows why he became president) is to take our troops back from Irak.
I don't know if we are going to talk again to the terrorists. I guess they'll deny it publicly...but who knows if they'll follow the "diplomacy" of that catalonian "pacifist" who negotiated with ETA. I hope they don't. By the way, we, the rest of Spain still could be murdered, but that doesn't seems to interest the "pacifist".
I think that our best policy now that we've shown that a bomb, porperly managed, can overthrow a gevernment, is to beg pardon to ETA, give them half the country, and beg them pardon for arresting them -unfairly- before. And, of course, we should send someone to talk to Al Qaeda, promise them to be kind and beg humbly for their forgiveness and protection.
That would save our lifes, and our new gevernment's power position for a long long time...and that's what really counts, isn't it ?
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posted
Wow, I'm really glad not everyone in Spain thinks we need to be nice to the nice terrorists so they don't have justification to go slaughtering more people.
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
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What we Americans would like to know is when Europeans are finally going to get over the terminal stupidity of appeasement. We are getting tired of having to pull Europe's chestnuts out of the fire because they keep following the course of appeasement (despite the fact that it has NEVER worked).
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Hola, tíos y tías. I am the new Spanish commander-in-chief, as you can see from my nick. Just wanted to say hi.
Posts: 80 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Nop, if you were spanish comander-in-chief you'll be quite more inteligent than that.
By the way, did you know that some of our soldiers families are regretting to have their sons/daughters and husbands/wifes back home ? They say they're going to come back alive, but ashamed. As you see, our army isn't a powerful army...but they are soldiers anyway, and it seems some of them know what means dignity. So please doesn't blame them.
Just a couple of thoughts.
Things are going to be quite messy here for a while, but that doesn't means our whole country has given up - though I'm afraid our new government's policies will make us even more unimportant than before. We were trying to find our niche, and now we don't exist anymore...again. We are going to be the anonymous nothing we were back in the 80's under the socialist government at that time.
About internal terrorism, I'm not worried anymore. We don't need terrorist to take our country apart. We have socialists.
About international terrorism...you never know. Socialists said we must not be a NATO country...and then they get us in. Now we're going to take back our soldiers - I mean, our support to USA and UK, because our soldiers doesn't really count as much as that - but...well...who knows. And, after all, we still could be sent to talk to some murderer. We're so nice
We've done what we shouldn't, we have given terrorists a hope. No way back. We have to get over it and think what are we going to do now.
About Europe. You have to realize that USA policies aren't meant to give peace to the world, but to assure USA superiority, and peace too, but inside USA borders. I believe that's what every country should do first of all. You have to be strong enough and lacking internal problems to help any other country without risking your own safety. And that doesn't means you must sit down at home while people dies next door...you should act, but being conscious of your power and your weakness. If by keeping any other country from supporting terrorism you can make your country safer, then you should act. But you should explain it as it is. If you say you are doing what your doing because you are so philanthropic, nobody will believe you...because despite of what you might think, they are not as unaware as you guess. Most of those countries will believe that while you are doing something hypothetically good, you use your acts to keep your influence over the rest of the world. They would not support you, because supporting you means to assert your superiority, and they are traying to achieve their own superiority in any degree they can. So, they oppose you, even if what you are doing is really good for them. It's that stupid ? yes ... well ..No, it isn't. They're playing the same game you're playing. Catch 22. We could keep this going on forever.
So we have two ways out. One. Fight each other right now until one of them surrenders. Two. Real collaboration.
At present, USA and Europe work jointly on matters that benefit both of them, but sometimes they have suspicions about each others motives, so they won't collaborate in full.
I know this is an oversimplification. Probably it isn't even accurately true, but maybe it isn't totally wrong. Anyway, we should learn not to put the blame on each other. Both of us are guilty to a certain degree. Our goal must be to find a solution, not to point each other faults.
Posts: 9 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
The best way to avoid having to admit you were wrong after a terrorist attack is to not make the mistake in the first place, or to correct it before someone uses violence to try and correct it themselves. Once that happens, you are stuck between allowing violence to influence you or stubbornly continuing to make the same mistake just to avoid "appeasement".
The problem is that the Spanish already made the mistake. They supported the war, and they continued to allow it. It would be foolish, though, to continue making the same mistake after you realize it, just because you want to avoid the appearance that terrorism can influence politics. Better that than more unjustified preemptive wars, more retaliation, and more destruction for everyone involved.
...
All of this could be avoided, though, if the U.S. would just give control over to the U.N. rather than trying to manipulate things according to it's own private strategy. The Spanish have said they will keep troops in if that change were made. Yet, the Bush administration demands to go it alone if it can't have control.
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