Deciding The Future

The Basque Autonomous Community's premier, Juan José Ibarretxe, insists that he is all for a popular consult that will decide the future of the three Basques provinces he rules. Here you have a note about this topic from EITb:

Politics

"Capacity to decide"

Basque premier: "Future of Basque people will be decided here"

08/17/2007

Juan Jose Ibarretxe assured that both the Basque Government and provincial councils defend the "capacity to decide." Furthermore, he augured that within the next four years "big changes" will take place "in politics."

The Basque premier, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, insisted that "the future of the Basque people will be decided here and never in Madrid," and highlighted that the Basque Government and the three provincial councils defend that "capacity to decide."

Ibarretxe met the members of the new Alava's Provincial Council in Vitoria-Gasteiz, formed by the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), nationalist EA and leftwing Aralar and presided by PNV's Xabier Agirre.

Ibarretxe insisted that the three provincial councils and the government he presides "share such basic principles as saying no categorically to violence and yes to the defence of human rights of everyone, also of those who have committed a crime." As he added, all those governments also say "yes to the capacity to decide of the Basque Country."

The Basque premier explained that this political stance "differentiates us from the world of Batasuna as it doesn't categorically denounce violence," and conservative PP and socialist PSOE, as they "don't admit that this country exists as such and we have the capacity to decide for ourselves."

The Basque premier predicted that within the next four years "big changes" will take place in the political arena, because "the cycle of ETA's violence is over forever" although he specified that we could "have tremendous troubles" for possible attacks.

Too bad that every time the going gets tough he takes his cues from Madrid.

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