Basque Voters Punish Rebels

The violent separatist group ETA was the clear loser in elections Sunday for a semiautonomous government in Spain’s Basque Country, but there was no outright winner of the bloodied region’s polarized vote.

The party widely regarded as the ETA’s political wing, Euskal Herritarrok, lost half the 14 seats it held in the 75-member Basque parliament--a stark rejection of the guerrilla group’s campaign of bombings and assassinations in the name of independence from Spain.

Although voters turned away from violence, they did not throw their support behind Madrid-based parties that sought to oust the 20-year-old Basque nationalist government with promises of fighting the ETA with an iron fist.

A record 80% of the region’s 1.8 million voters cast ballots in an election that was seen as a referendum on how to deal with the ETA, whose initials stand for Basque Homeland and Freedom. The group has killed 30 people since abandoning a truce in December 1999, and it ended the electoral campaign Saturday with a bomb in Madrid that wounded 14.

The Basque Nationalist Party won more votes than any other and gained six additional seats in the regional parliament--nearly all of those lost by the ETA’s allies--to hold on to the regional government it has led since 1980.

But the party did not win enough seats to form a government on its own or a majority government with other nationalists. And it has said that it will not return to the coalition it had formed with the ETA’s party before public outrage at the armed group’s return to violence forced a break in February 2000.

Basque President Juan Jose Ibarretxe, 41, will continue to rule with a minority of the regional parliament--a situation that led to political paralysis in the last year, forcing him to call this election.

Sunday night, Ibarretxe declared a “great political victory” but asked opposition parties to meet with him today to try to overcome their divisions and allow for a workable government.

“We have opened the door to peace. We have opened the door to dialogue. We want peace,” he said.

The Basque Nationalist Party supports the ETA’s goal of self-determination but opposes the use of violence and believes dialogue is the only way to bring about an end to the group’s war for independence. The government of Spain’s conservative prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, has ruled out dialogue.

While Basques have an autonomous parliament, police force and health and education systems, and collect their own taxes, Madrid controls the security forces, foreign policy, border crossings and all air and sea ports. Many Basques would like a referendum on independence, but Madrid fears that a breakaway could lead nationalists in other regions, such as Catalonia and Galicia, to follow suit.

The Basque nationalist vote was a blow to Aznar’s conservative Popular Party, which gained just one seat in the parliament despite throwing political muscle and capital into the race. The party believed it had a chance of ousting the nationalists by forming a coalition with the opposition Socialist Party, but it failed to make significant gains.

The Popular Party’s Basque leader, former Interior Minister Jaime Mayor Oreja, called the election “a disappointment” but added, “This was the first time there was a feeling of an alternative.”

Mayor Oreja, who narrowly escaped an ETA grenade attack on his office in 1982, had vowed to pursue the armed group with extra police. He applauded the losses by the ETA’s political party, saying, “This society has reduced by half the political support for terror and fear.”

Many voters who are fed up with the ETA’s terror campaign said they feared that a Popular Party victory would bring even more unrest to the region because the ETA would feel justified in stepping up attacks on a government “controlled by Madrid.”

The ETA was founded in 1959 during dictator Francisco Franco’s campaign of repression against regional nationalism. It took up arms in 1968 and has killed more than 800 people.

There were no reports of election day violence, although the campaign was marred by Saturday’s bombing in Madrid and the earlier assassination of a ruling-party senator in Zaragoza. The central issue for most voters was how to confront the ETA’s brutal tactics.

The peaceful voting was just one of the ways in which a sunny day seemed to belie the life-and-death issues at hand. In San Sebastian, seaside walkways bustled with well-dressed men and women who had cast their ballots on the way to church or afterward. Playgrounds buzzed with small children; bars were filled with customers enjoying a glass of wine ahead of the traditional Sunday lunch.

But these trappings of the good life masked another reality of one of Spain’s most prosperous regions: the fear and suspicion. For the large part of the population that does not support nationalist parties, life holds the threat of murder, kidnapping and extortion. Many are forced to choose between living with bodyguards or moving away; others hide in back rooms and under tables after receiving warnings of a bomb on their street.

At the Amara public school in San Sebastian, voters across the political spectrum said they wanted peace but disagreed on how to go about getting it.

“More sovereignty,” said a 56-year-old supporter of the ETA’s allies, who added that the conservative parties “want to take away our rights, our schools, our language, our independence.”

“Dialogue and pardon” is the way to resolve political differences, a Basque Nationalist Party supporter in her 70s said as she left the polls.

“Respect for the law,” offered a 53-year-old civil servant who said he voted for a change in government after 20 years of the same party.

“What is important to me is freedom and that there are no more killings. The rest is negotiable,” said the man, who, like most voters, refused to give his name. “There are citizens here who don’t have the same rights to speak and live as other citizens.”

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Miller is on assignment in Bilbao.