sábado, abril 10, 2004

Terrorist Governments – A month ago, bombs went off in suburban trains heading for Madrid in the early hours of the morning. A massive terrorist attack took place, the biggest ever in Spain. Since then, a lot has been said a lot more will be. Discussing the slaughtering is not my purpose. What else can you add to the discussion when you’re simply talking about two hundred deaths? Yes, it’s true; I confess I’m here to discuss politics.

What I find absolutely intolerable, disgusting, appalling, whatever adjectives you may want, is the fact that the Spanish PP was much more worried about protecting themselves, hiding the truth from the electorate. They knew public opinion would punish them for the position alongside the USA and so, they deemed telling the truth about death something not as important as creating the conditions to see their party re-elected.

After all, they only had to disguise the facts a little bit for a couple of days, just enough to get them passed the elections. Zapping exercise: while TV’s from all over the world were screening Saturday night’s protests in Madrid, Spanish channels, public and private, where pretending nothing was happening. TVE was airing a wildlife documentary. A Spanish girl told me the following week that the private are owned by a holding the PP controls. Go figure.

The result: right wing fell that Sunday. More people than the poles told us would vote showed up and demonstrated that, above all, we the voters can’t stand lies. Probably fearing a manipulation of the kind could also be put in practice in their own backyard, the French decided to present Monsieur Jacques Chirac with a dilemma worth a couple of migraines, forcing him to consider having to dismiss Monsieur Jean Pierre Raffarin.

All of this is great. It just goes to show how we can become a nightmare to the ones that rule the destiny of our countries. With a manifestation of disapproval in regard to lying, we point out democracy’s main problem nowadays, the lack of credibility. I just hope my own rightwing Government learned a few lessons the past weeks. It should, at least, have a bunch of things to think about.

I’m not exactly here to present a miraculous recipe to end with one of the plagues that torment our days. Far from that. I wouldn’t be able to, I do not possess one. But what I do know is that violence only generates violence and I’m pretty much sure I’m not the only one to be acquainted with this precious little piece of advice. And, therefore, the traditional striking back solutions, especially when based on shitty assumptions about weapons that will never be discovered, don’t seem to be able to take us to where we really want to go.

And I mean peace, in case most of those sitting in the chairs of power have forgotten.