Spain has
Fallen – not like Greece – but Fallen all the Same
By Peter
Koenig
December
22, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
- The
Spanish elections – 20 December – were a deceit and
a farce. Nobody seems to notice. At least not those
concerned, the ignorant electorate, those who will
suffer again possibly under a new neoliberal Rajoy
leadership.
People forget
and are vulnerable to propaganda and lies and
manipulations through the bought media in Europe as
much as in the US. And this in Spain of all places,
where unemployment is still hovering around the 20%
– 25% mark, with youth unemployment around 50%, and
where an average grad student coming out of
university earns on average 1,000 euros or less per
month, if he can find a job; hardly a liveable wage.
Others have to
survive on monthly incomes in the 500 to 800 euro
range. Spain, a country like Greece, where
neoliberal troika policies cut minimum wages,
pensions, increased retirement age, privatized the
health system – and are at the verge of privatizing
education. Spain, a country where the ruling
Partido Popular (PP) was and still is involved
in horrendous corruption scandals all the way to the
top, as was widely divulged earlier this year even
by the mainstream media. Does it not seem absurd
that in this miserably down-trodden Spain, the
largest single block of people are no more awake
than voting again for their hangman?
Maybe they are
awake, but stunned of the results and are too tired
from working for peanuts than ‘wasting’ their scarce
spare-time to investigate election results,
analysing how elections could have turned out the
way they did: The arch-conservative neoliberal PP
winning a majority of parliamentary seats – 123
(28.7% of votes), though a far cry from the absolute
majority (176) and a drop of 64 seats from 2011; the
PSOE (Socialist Party) coming in with 22% and 90
seats (down 20), its worst result ever; the
up-and-coming PODEMOS – gaining 69 seats (20.7%);
and the new center-right Ciudadanos Party winning 40
seats (13.9%), the latter two from basically zero in
2011.
Forming a new
Government with these fractured election results
will not be easy. While the new Congress is normally
responsible for choosing the new Prime Minister, in
the present divided Spain it is likely that King
Felipe will have to intervene, negotiating with the
leading parties to propose a candidate that suits
them all. This process starts officially on 13
January 2016, when the new deputies are sworn in and
the speaker is selected. If the Monarch’s suggested
candidate doesn’t get an absolute majority in the
first round, there will be a second round of voting
48 hours later, where the proposed candidate must
only receive a majority of the cast votes. Failing
this, new elections will have to be called within
two months. This would be a first in Spain’s
history. The socialists have already said they would
not support the incumbent, Mariano Rajoy. But will
they stick to their promise?
The 2015
Spanish elections beg two questions: First, how come
that in the traditional two-party system, suddenly
four parties emerge, three of which of almost equal
strength, PP, PSOE and Podemos, and the fourth,
Ciudadanos rapidly growing. Together they accumulate
322 of the 350 seats, or 85.3%. The two new ones,
Podemos and Ciudadanos (also called C’s) grew from
basically nothing in March 2014, some 18 month ago,
to take a total of 109 parliamentary seats, almost
one third of all seats. That is unheard of anywhere
in the western world. This coincides with the time
when in Greece Syriza started making headways.
Second, how
come that in a country where 80% to 90% of the
population suffered misery and social hardship from
the neoliberal PP-imposed austerity programs – still
vote with a considerable majority for the party that
punished them? Is this the Stockholm syndrome, or
what? – Is there perhaps something else behind it?
Spain was
ruled by fascist General Francisco Franco for 39
years, from 1936 to his death in 1975. Out of the
Civil War (1936-1939) grew an authoritarian,
nationalistic fascist party, the Falangistas. They
became Franco’s official ruling party in 1939. The
Falangistas were instrumental in commandeering death
squads and ‘disappearances’.
After WWII
Spain was internationally considered a pariah state
due to her fascist and oppressive government and was
kept out of the UN, the Marshall Plan and NATO.
Nevertheless, in 1953 Washington tempted by the
peninsula’s strategic situation entered into an
alliance with Franco by signing the Pact of Madrid.
It was a calculated step for the US to establish
military bases which guaranteed America’s support
for the dictator – who was also a fierce opponent of
the Soviet Union. Spain was admitted to the UN in
1955 and eventually seven years after Franco’s
deaths, in 1982, Spain became the 15th
NATO member.
During
Franco’s reign, the Falangistas solidified
as a dictatorial fascist party. After Franco’s
death, the party did not disintegrate; to the
contrary, to this day it remains very influential
with close ties to the Catholic Church. With this
semi-clandestine right-wing political scenario alive
and well, wouldn’t it have been relatively simple
for Washington to pull the strings and creating a
multi-party divided Spain, easier to manipulate and
to control? Another form of divide and conquer. US
global interests wanted to avoid the risk of another
Greece, where the left would come to power and would
need to be smashed as did happen with Syriza under
the command of Anglo-Zionist Washington –
implemented by the troika (European Central Bank,
European Commission and IMF).
Had it not
been for most likely criminal threats to the
lead-politicians of Syriza, Greece was at the point
– and still is – of disintegrating and exiting the
euro – and possibly also leaving the EU – the
European non-Union. Another ‘Greece’, as Spain could
have become, might have prompted not just a
‘Spaxit’, but most probably the collapse of the EU
altogether. That would have been an unforgiveable
and probably unrepairable disaster for the Unite
States which needs Europe as its puppet union of
states directed by Washington lackeys in Brussels,
for trade and manipulating markets, as a monetary
stability base and for highly qualified cheap labor;
and – maybe most importantly – as a vital buffer
vis-à-vis Russia and the emerging eastern alliance
with China – the BRICS and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation
Organization) states.
For those
still in doubt – the Unite States of America were
the initiators and creators of the European Union,
carefully planned, step by step, from the Brussels
Treaty after WWII in 1948, to the Paris Treaty
1951/52, to the Modified Brussels Treaty 1954/55, to
the Treaty of Rome 1957/58, and eventually to the
Merger of Treaties in 1965/67 forming the three
pillars of the European Community (European Atomic
Energy Community (EURATOM), European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC), European Economic Community –
EEC); leading to the Maastricht Treaty of 1991/92 –
the foundation of the European Union, enhanced and
modified by the Amsterdam Treaty, 1997/99; followed
by the Nice Treaty, 2001/2003; and finally the
2007/2009 Lisbon Treaty, currently in force.
You may notice
the European Union has no Constitution; and none of
the various Treaties foresees a political European
Union, one that would have solidarity of federal
nations as a fundamental basis. A 2004 attempt to
establish an EU Constitution was immediately
boycotted by the UK as a proxy for Washington, so as
to have subsequent popular votes in France and the
Netherlands fail.
A Union of
nations without a common political agenda and goal
cannot have a sustainable common currency. That’s
where the thought process may have failed. The Euro
may sooner or later be doomed to collapse and so may
be the European Union; the sooner the better. The
prompting of the process of dissolving this fake
union, of breaking loose of the nefarious fangs of
Washington and NATO, will be a sign of the European
populations’ awakening and wisdom.
Reflecting on
the Spanish elections of 20 December 2015, putting
them into context with never ending austerity
imposed by the rich on the poor, resulting in a
never ending economic ‘crisis’ – leading to ever
richer banks and an ever richer Anglo-European elite
— may hopefully be a trigger for action.
Peter Koenig
is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also
a former World Bank staff and worked extensively
around the world in the fields of environment and
water resources. He is the author of
Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War,
Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed
– fiction based on facts and on 30 years of
World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a
co-author of
The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from
the Resistance.
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