A critical point may be reached very soon on Catalonia's independence issue, with the Spanish government likely to instigate judicial action against the new Catalan parliament, as early as this Monday, November 9. The post below is a roughish translation from the original article in French of an intelligent piece looking at the claim that a "coup" is underway in Catalonia - even Spanish government ministers are giving it this label - as the pro-independence parliamentary majority, which won the election on September 27, prepares to pass a declaration of its intention to "disconnect" from Spain.
Romaric Godin of the French business weekly La Tribune looks in some depth and from an outsider's perspective, at a question which is sure to get some international airing in the days and weeks ahead.
Romaric Godin of the French business weekly La Tribune looks in some depth and from an outsider's perspective, at a question which is sure to get some international airing in the days and weeks ahead.
"
In the next
few days, the Catalan independentist crisis will move into an acute phase. The
three unionist parties in the Catalan Parliament - the socialist PSC, the
conservative PP and Ciudadanos -have decided to seek recourse from Spain’s
Constitutional Court against the pro-independence resolution setting in motion
a process of "disconnection" of Catalonia from the Spanish state.
This decision could lead the sovereignist parties to begin
"disobedience" towards Madrid, as the resolution itself envisages.
What
Catalonia is now engaged in is a struggle between two forms of legitimacy. The
first of these is that of the Catalan independentist parties asserting they
have the democratic legitimacy to implement their programme of "disconnection"
since they have a parliamentary majority. Opposing them, the unionist parties
base their argument on the legitimacy of the Spanish constitution and the
illegality of the independence process. Thus, they respond to the votes of the
Catalan parliamentary majority with court proceedings, awaiting the activation
of certain measures that could be used to implement decisions made by Spanish
courts, such as Article 155 of the Constitution which allows Catalonia’s
autonomy to be suspended.
In this
struggle, the idea of the unionist parties is to present the Catalans as
"rebels" and "outside the law." A number of Spanish
politicians, mostly on the political right, have stated that the independentist
declaration represents a "coup d’etat” in that it is a rupture with the
Spanish constitutional order. In particular, unionists do not cease to point to
the lack of legitimacy of the independentists’ parliamentary majority. The two
Catalan lists in favour of independence –firstly Junts Pel Sí, which included
the centre-right CDC, the republican left party ERC and the pro-independence civil-society groups,
and secondly the CUP, a radical left secessionist party – did in fact obtain
47.8% of the votes. Independence supporters are thus 80,000 votes short of an
absolute majority. And since the President of the Generalitat (the Catalan
Government), Artur Mas, had proclaimed that the regional elections of 27
September were to be "plebiscitary" on the issue of independence, the
sovereignist lists, despite winning a majority of seats, do not, it is argued,
have a sufficient mandate to break with Spanish legality. Such a break would
thus be a "coup."
These
arguments, however, have weaknesses. The first is that by staging a judicial
fight against a programme presented by a parliamentary majority which has
simply tried to apply it, you are in effect criminalizing pro-independence
ideas. Pro-independence opinions will still be permissible - on the condition
that they are never applied in practice. Once these ideas reach majority
support in a parliamentary assembly, they immediately become illegal. This
[illegalization] is, in fact, precisely the goal of the unionist parties, who
aim to demonstrate the "impossible" nature of the independence
movement in order to disqualify secessionism from the next elections. The
trouble is that this logic could just as easily be used to disqualify unionism
since its thrust is to create a way of circumventing Catalonia’s democratic
choice. An inverse situation of the "coup" could thus be turned
against the unionists, revealing that the strategy is a dead end.
This
"judicialization" of the Catalan question has been the path taken
since 2010 by the Spanish government, most notably when they prohibited the
referendum planned for 9 November, 2014. However, the strategy has not really
paid off. Despite the ban on last year’s referendum [causing it to be reframed
as an unofficial poll], this year’s election saw the pro-independence parties
increasing their popularity, gaining 95,595 more votes than those said “yes” to
an independent state in the earlier poll. The strategy is therefore hardly
functional in political terms. It actually reinforces the idea that the Spanish
government is still refusing to hear the message and the will of the Catalans.
It feeds the feeling that Spain is contemptuous towards the "Catalan
people", and this in turn, naturally creates the opportunity for
independence support to grow.
As for the
absence of a majority vote for the pro-independence parties, this argument is
not valid either. First, because the unionists did not recognize the
plebiscitary nature of the elections of 27 September. It is therefore strange
to hear them today arguing that it was a plebiscite. As well, because a
parliamentary majority that has the majority of seats in a democracy has a
legitimate mandate to implement its programme. There are many governments in
Europe that have a majority of seats without a majority of votes, and they are
not subject to any challenge to their legitimacy. In fact, following the recent
Portuguese election, that country’s president is trying to impose a government
that is in the minority in both votes and seats. And once again, the argument
can be turned against the unionist parties. For if the pro-independence parties
did not have a majority vote, the three unionist parties only managed to win
39.17% of the vote on 27 September - less than the figure for just one of the
pro-independence lists, Junts Pel Sí (39.55%). The fact that these three
minority lists are clearly trying to prevent the operation of the Catalan
Parliament and criminalise its decisions could also fall within the definition
of "coup."
But above
all, if these elections were plebiscitary, it was precisely because the Spanish
state had banned the referendum on independence using the Constitutional Count.
Thus, holding a plebiscitary election was the "least worst option", a
way of giving voters a voice, but an imperfect way, as the result produced from
these elections could not be clear for two reasons: for one, in this type of
vote, issues unrelated to independence can play a part in the choice of a party
by the voters. For example, some independence supporters might have chosen to
vote for a non-independence left-wing party in order to avoid endorsing the
austerity policies of Artur Mas, but who knows how they would have voted in an
actual referendum? Moreover, the pro-independence vote’s shortfall from an
absolute majority is so small that one cannot write off the possible
significance of such a "deviation." The second element is that
several parties refused to take a stand on independence as such, or said they
were in favour of a legal consultation. This was the case of the left alliance
CSQP and the Christian Democrat party UDC who together accounted for over 11%
of votes. Again, of these 11%, how many voters would have voted yes in a
dedicated referendum on independence or would have abstained? It’s impossible
to say. It is therefore impossible to say that all those who did not vote for
the pro-independence lists voted against independence.
So, the
Catalan parliamentary majority can claim to have the right to apply its
disconnection programme. Especially as the disobedience towards Madrid and the
Constitutional Court has only one goal: to organize a legal referendum on
independence in Catalonia, despite its illegality in Catalonia. A referendum
which is the only act capable of justifying independence, or burying it. The
determination of the unionists to refuse such a referendum is thus highly
suspicious. Once again, it highlights a refusal to listen to the will of the
Catalans and -and most gravely - it also highlights the refusal of union
supporters to defend Spanish unity as part of a clear democratic process, given
that there are obviously excellent arguments in favour of Catalonia’s remaining
in Spain.
It is
striking that the major Spanish parties reject this referendum option even
though it has enabled the UK and Canada to defeat their respective independence
movements, in Quebec and Scotland. The refusal of a democratic process on the
Catalan question, can only further widen the gap between Catalonia and Spain,
and within Catalonia, between the Catalans. This is a very dangerous strategy
for the very future of Spain, which could come to be seen by an increasing
number of Catalans as a "prison", further promoting the
radicalization of the independence movement.
From this
point of view, there are two actors in the process who seem to bear major
responsibility. The first is the PSOE, the Spanish socialist party which has
gone along with the position of the two right-wing unionist parties, the PP and
Ciudadanos. By refusing the principle of a self-determination referendum, which
has been admitted by the rest of the Spanish left, the PSOE justifies the
position of the Catalan "coup". The party therefore helps make the
situation more difficult.
The second
responsibility is that of Europe and the rest of the world, which has been
supporting the unionist position in the hope that the independence movement
will abandon its plans due to lack of external support. Even the Secretary
General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, has recently denied that the Catalans have a
right to self-determination, thus following in the footsteps of the EU and most
major countries. But again, this manoeuvre seems doomed given the democratic
legitimacy of the independentist parties.
In
particular, the position is weak in legal terms: Ban Ki-Moon affirms that
Catalonia is not a part of the "territories recognized by the authorities
as "non-autonomous". But this was also the case of Scotland, Quebec
and Montenegro, which were all part of UN member states and which held
self-determination referendums. And, in the case of Montenegro, despite the
referendum being contested by some, the UN recognized the new state without
difficulty. In short, all this seems to be first and foremost intimidation,
which is ultimately counter-productive. Thus, while the legal strategy of
criminalization of Catalan independence seems to have created a stalemate, the
attitude of the international community in sticking to this strategy is pure
madness."
No comments:
Post a Comment