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Hoy toca votar

Tags: Elecciones

Damn Right We Are

Mark Mardell raises a good question: were Spanish politicians right to stop campaigning? However, the way he phrases and frames that question is troubling and, certainly for me, damn irritating.

Politicians are always quick to say that terrorism will not influence them. Yet whether it is introducing harsher laws or starting peace talks, it does. But in this case have the Spanish politicians sent out the wrong signals? It is understandable why they have reacted as they did. After the terrible bombing that killed a 191 people three days before the last election it raised awful memories. When the conservatives blamed Eta rather than Islamists it seemed to change the result. This time they wanted to show dignity and unity. This was also the first Eta murder on Spanish soil for two years so it wasn’t merely the continuation of a long running campaign. Of course it is right to pay tribute to the murdered man and attempt words of comfort to his family. But won’t the murderer be sitting at home, watching TV, chuckling that he can jerk the strings of a nation? Is it right to cancel the normal democratic process?

Personally, I believe the issue goes beyond a position on whether and to which extent one should give a heightened stage for the criminals’ deeds. There is an unmistakable matter of cultural context here, and now that we’re approaching Holy Week I think that’s as good a clarifying reference as a possible comparison among public reactions in the UK and in Spain in immediate response to terrorist attacks.

To many in Spain, the significance of making a collective statement is that of a publicly visible gesture in reaffirmation of shared values. It’s not an entirely casual coincidence with Roman Catholic liturgy, where the act of participating in the sacrament of communion is a publicly visible one, too: you step up and, entirely visible to the congregation gathered in the church, you accept the symbolic flesh and blood of Christ as your own.

When, in the aftermath of the attacks in London on July 7, 2005 there was a striking common determination among Londoners to not let the atrocious deeds of a few subhuman criminals affect the course of a determined democracy, and deliberately carry on with ordinary behavior, that was as much a profound and significant statement of rejection and denial of the terrorists’ aim to alter it, as it was in the case of the massive, silent protests in response to the carnage the year before, on March 11, 2004, caused by the train bombings in Madrid. Or, more significantly, the spike in subsequent voter participation in the general elections that were picked as the deliberate backdrop for those attacks by their perpetrators.

I don’t believe there’s any bit of difference in the degree of determination to deny such criminals a change of collective course within a larger democratic framework. That’s a major reason I reject Mr. Mardell’s oversimplified attribution of a position to politicians according to which “terrorism will not influence them” as, quite obviously, terrorism does affect them, one way or another. Such is therefore an absurdly obvious and ridiculously loaded statement of falsely presumed intent.

In fact, by suggesting that politicians in Spain somehow tend to proffer a denial of patent reality in pursuit of one objective or another, by sheer logic Mr. Mardell implicitly also suggests an attitude which is any combination of brazen demagoguery and collective naiveté. Another reason not to take that argument at face value.

The underlying common thread here, both in the case of the UK and in Spain, is a collective determination to not give in to terrorists, no matter their doomed bestiality, in derailing our common course within a democratic framework.

Whether that is shown by means of a striking absence of a visible response, or precisely via a massive display of unity in that same determination, is a circumstantial matter of culture.

But there is another, more politically relevant reason to the cause for Mr. Mandell’s grappling with Spanish steel resolve. Precisely four years ago, in the attacks in Madrid, the democratic sacrament of general elections was picked as the implicit target of the terrorists. For four dreadful years, the losing party of those elections has been mauling the party that went on to form government, portraying them as responsible in varying ways for terrorism, right up to the electoral campaign that now has come to a screeching halt, due to yet another terrorist act.

To suggest that campaigning should somehow continue would therefore also imply a belief that campaigning over the still warm bodies of victims of criminal carnage somehow benefits the democratic process. Unsurprisingly, I disagree with such a suggestion.

Furthermore. there is a reason that the day before the elections themselves campaigning is forbidden by Spanish law, just as much as publication of election poll results during the five preceding days. The underlying idea is to enforce a cooling down of much-heated rhetoric, and give common sense a reasonable opportunity to fare its course, without the noise of short term idiocy and naturally myopic hysteria. Again, whether the means are effective is another issue for debate; the intent is to provide the heart of democracy with a calm beating pulse.

But in the context of a politically motivated assassination I believe it’s all the more pertinent and fitting to agree voluntarily, in true respect to democracy itself, to a common silence for reflection, in commonly shared trust in the electorate’s wisdom to do the right thing - to vote freely.

By raising the question, let alone the way he phrases it, Mr. Mardell reflects a disturbing distortion of why Spaniards, in testimony of strong democratic credentials, refuse to back down on defending democracy. Standing up and being counted in support of the normal, democratic process is an act of democratic citizenship: it is downright shameful to misrepresent that, as Mr. Mardell does, as an act “to cancel the normal democratic process”.

We suspend our campaigns because we don’t need to “debate” a defense of democracy itself. How we show that support for democracy, whether in a dignified collective gesture in protest or in a dignified absence of making gestures, is not a witness to the strength of our democratic commitment. Casting doubt on the wisdom of supporting democracy, however, is a troubling sign of misunderstanding the underlying reality.

Mr. Mardell, our credentials are not up for discussion here, where terrorists have acted in their quest to derail a democratic society on its course. I don’t need any lectures on how to defend our belief in keeping our democracy strong, and I sure as hell don’t accept your questioning our motives for doing so, Mr. Mardell: shame on you for doing just that.

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