A defiant Basque regional parliament narrowly approved plans on Friday for a referendum seen as a veiled push for breaking away from Spain, setting it on a collision course with the central government.
Spain’s government immediately vowed to block the referendum, saying it was unconstitutional.
“The plan will be appealed and suspended,” Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said.
The government will file a lawsuit with the Constitutional Court, which is Spain’s highest. Once it agrees to consider the motion, this has the effect of automatically suspending plans for the referendum, which Basque authorities want to hold Oct. 25.
The referendum would put two questions to a vote. The first asks Basques if they favor a negotiated solution to the separatist conflict if armed militant group ETA is willing to end violence.
The second asks if they agree that all Basque political parties should work toward an agreement on what it calls Basques’ right to decide their future and that this should be put to a second referendum before the end of 2010.
When Basques talk about such self-determination, critics elsewhere in Spain see this as code for advocating a breakaway from Spain.
“His idea divides and it will not go forward,” Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said of Basque regional president Juan Jose Ibarretxe’s planned referendum.
The Basque regional government, run by a coalition of three moderate nationalist parties that lack a majority, got help on Friday from a pro-independence party that supports ETA.
The Communist Party of the Basque Lands allowed one of its nine lawmakers to vote in favor of the referendum.
The final tally in the 75-seat Basque legislature was 34-33 with seven abstentions. One legislator was absent.
Zapatero’s government says the planned referendum is unconstitutional because only Spain’s government, not a regional administration, can authorize such a vote.
“Democracy is above all a set of rules which have been previously agreed so that things can work,” Zapatero told reporters in the northeastern city of Zaragoza.
Ibarretxe first floated the idea late last year as part of a “road map” peace plan following the collapse of negotiations between the Spanish government and ETA.
In debate before Friday’s vote, Ibarretxe denied the referendum was divisive, and insisted there is nothing wrong with simply asking people what they want.
“Democracy is not about keeping society from having an opinion and expressing it, but rather about consulting, hearing citizens’ desires and respecting them,” he said.
Ibarretxe is also being criticized for reneging on a pledge to hold a referendum only if ETA, which has killed around 825 people since 1968, puts an end to attacks.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS