Our position on local and territorial elections in our Country

Our position on local and territorial elections in our Country

 

Introduction

In view of the upcoming call for local elections (as well as the territorial or “autonomous” ones), and given that – either it be due to ignorance or to a deliberate bad faith – our positions on them do often appear distorted and falsely presented without any nuance as a “total boycott” against them, we expose this issue here in order to avoid misunderstandings.

As is natural, and so we have often stated it, our slogan of TOTAL BOYCOTT is directed in the first place against the colonialist “general elections” that, presented as democratic, are called by the French-Spanish imperialistic régime establishel on our Country; and then against its totalitarian institutions and juridical monopolies – Parliaments of Spain and of France – and against its imperialistic and fascist parties and ideological-political agents, since the ones and the others establish that both our own independent State and sovereign Parliament, as well as the reality of this imperialism that is subduing us through permanent military occupation, do not exist; something that of course we must NEVER accept. Instead, we have never formulated that slogan of boycott against the municipal and “autonomous” elections. For these elections, what we have advocated in the past and we are asking again now: given the unfortunate circumstances that still concur in our Country and that we expose again below, is active abstention. (See our text: ‘Elecciones locales y territoriales bajo el imperialismo’, published on June 8, 2020.)

Either National Unity candidacies, or active abstention. Possibilities and conditions

Indeed, this active abstention is determined NOT by a principled position against these local and territorial elections in our Country (something that we DO maintain for the French-Spanish imperialistic “general elections” that seek to legitimize their occupation of our Country), but because of the current non-existence of a candidacy of national unity for them. Given that, as is undeniable, this leads to the internal division of the Basque People and the blocking of any policy of liberation against imperialism, the response that naturally occurs among the People as a mechanism of self-defence in the face of this lack of Basque unity is the spontaneous abstention of broad and qualified sectors of our society in these elections; a response that, as long as this division is not overcome through the offer of a candidacy of Basque national unity, is undoubtedly progressive and preferable to the participation and support for the divisive and liquidationist bureaucracies Pnv-Eta and their satellites.

However, as can easily be understood, for these elections with which the town councils and other posts of our Country are elected (which of course we are interested in having them in our hands and not in those of the agents of French-Spanish imperialism), it would be desirable to participate in them but only if it can be done under an essential condition. This consiste of the fact that the Country must present in each municipality – or Territory – A SINGLE candidacy of Basque National Unity. A unity that – in the face of the French-Spanish imperialism and all the integrated social class that constitutes and maintains it over our Country – is determined by the superior social cohesion of our national base, but that can only be achieved in strategic terms.

This means that this progressive and strategic union of all democratic – and consequently anti-imperialistic – sectors of our Country: being as it is possible andnecessary, must be inescapably based on a non-partisan position universally accepted by all patriotic groups, and therefore founded on a single strategic principle of dual national-State affirmation of the Basque People, capable of bringing together and galvanizing around it ALL the democratic opposition of our Country against French-Spanish imperialism as a whole.

This basic strategic principle, which the Basque Movement of Resistance and National Salvation (BMRNS) is based upon, has been formulated and exposed with total clarity in its Manifesto, published in English, Euskara, French, and Spanish, as well as in the texts published on this page, and every authentically patriotic and democratic group admits it naturally and spontaneously (in the same way that it is rejected by French-Spanish fascist imperialism).

Its two affirmations are:

1/ Affirmation of the right of freedom, FREE disposition, national independence or self-determination of the Basque People/Euskal Herria.

“Cornerstone of democracy”, the international right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples is a right that is original, fundamental, inherent, customary, immediate, unconditional, continuous, permanent, inalienable, indefeasible and imprescriptible for all Peoples subjugated under an imperialistic and foreign régime; that is the same thing as their unconditional and immediate independence in the face of / against any foreign domination or interference contrary to their national freedom; and that has been recognized – not constituted – by the contemporary International Law of the United Nations: from the First Article of its foundational Charter of San Francisco as well as by numerous and relevant Resolutions of its General Assembly, as THE FIRST OF FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE PRECONDITION FOR THE FULL ENJOYMENT OF THEM ALL.

In our Country, its corollary and practical application consists, as an inescapable requirement for its realization, in the DEMAND FOR THE UNCONDITIONAL AND IMMEDIATE EVACUATION of all the occupying forces and of the entire apparatus of imperial-colonialist subjugation of the occupying Powers: Spain and France, OUTSIDE the historical Territories of the Basque People/Euskal Herria and its State. And

2/ Affirmation of the continuity, validity and actuality of our own State: the Kingdom of Nabarre, successor of the Kingdom of Pamplona – “the Kingdom of the Basques” – constituted by a confederation of Vasconic Republics, Counties and Lordships historically and freely gathered around it. Internationally recognized for a thousand years, the Kingdom of Nabarre remains the sole State of the Basque Nation, which it has never renounced to nor has ever admitted or recognized any other.

Its necessary consequence implies the constant and incessant NON-RECOGNITION AND DENUNCIATION of the occupying States: the “Kingdom of Spain” and the “French Republic”, and of their totalitarian régimes of military occupation, as criminal, imperialistic, colonialist and fascist, and not as their own, non-Nationalist, non-violent, legitimate and democratic, as the purported “official Basque political class” formed by the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites is doing to this day.

Naturally, given that French-Spanish fascist imperialism will not agree to voluntarily withdraw its occupying forces outside our Country, the only coherent action that we have left, that is in our hands and that is perfectly achievable with the minimum of social cost and the maximum of revolutionary effectiveness, is – as has been indicated and as proposed by the BMRNS – the TOTAL BOYCOTT of the imperialists and the institutions of French-Spanish imperialism.

Basque Movement of Resistance and National Salvation, and National Council of the Resistance. Structure and functions

Instead, the national and estrategic unity of all the democratic forces of our Country in a BMRNS: established on the aceptante of those two affirmations by all the forces that make it up, allows us to achieve candideces of national unity for our local institutions. Of course, all the patriotic collectives of the Country integrated into the BMRNS will have equal representation in its governing body, the National Council of the Resistance (NCR). These groups will be able to retain their personality within the NCR, so as to present their own position when the Country regains its freedom; but, as long as the Country continues without independence, the objective of that Council shall be to uphold these two affirmations and to ensure that they are implemented.

This objective is strategic for the subjugated Basque People, and it is also the only one that can attract the gathering of all its democratic opposition forces so as to recover national independence and restore our own State. A different thing will occur when national independence is already effective, French-Spanish Nationalist Imperialism has been abolished, and our Country is in a situation of real freedom, at which time different party options may produce their own policy proposals; but, until that moment, any internal division of the subjugated People leads and can only lead to its weakening, and therefore to perpetuate the present domination of French-Spanish Nationalist Imperialism over the Basque People and its State.

Candidacies of National Unity. Their appointment

On how these unique candidacies, chosen from among the collectives represented in the NCR, can be designated, this is completely irrelevant: either they can be reached by consensus between the groups, establishing turns, or, if there is no other way, simply by drawing lots among the relevant people – even independents – who are proposed for each candidacy. And, once the unitary candidacies have been presented in this way, the slogan of the National Council of the Resistance will be to ask our People for their full support for them and not to leave a single vote at home due to laziness.

Instead, in the places where it is not possible to carry out this single candidacy of national unity, because the selfishness of the bureaucracies of the parties – never better said, “parted” – Pnv-Eta and its satellites: Ea-EH Bildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc., leads them to compete among themselves and to divide the patriotic vote by presenting themselves separately (so as to then ally and form “majorities” with the imperialistic parties against their Basque competitors and against any anti-imperialistic liberation program, as is the case), in those cases the slogan of the NCR will be one of abstention, which will be promoted – and very actively – against themin those places. And this is because this is the only way we have to disrupt their betrayal and opportunism that have been destroying our Country for almost fifty years now; and to promote and realize in its place the union of the entire patriotic Basque Movement around a strategic Resistance, avoiding its use in pursuit of selfish and divisive calculations that can only perpetuate our current state of submission to French-Spanish imperialism.

Conclusion

All these are not utopian speculations or fantasies; it is the horizon to which we must tend and that is perfectly possible, if this Country has the national strength to understand what is the ONLY path that can lead it to its liberation; a path that is only possible with national unity in the face of the military occupation of French-Spanish imperialism upon the Basque People and its State, the Kingdom of Nabarre.

Of course, not only the absolute necessity but also the real possibility of structuring a Movement of Resistance and Salvation of the Basque Country, under the leadership of a National Council of the Resistance, are based on our national situation, perfectly explained in our texts. As indicated in them, in a Country subjected under an imperialistic foreign régime of military occupation there is only room for two real Parties, namely: on the one hand, that of the integration with the criminal power established on the military occupation (sustained in our Country by all the various apparently conflicting manifestations of that Party: from the “extreme left” to the “extreme right” of French-Spanish National-imperialists); and on the other, the Party of the Resistance, founded both on the absolute rejection of the foreign imperialistic military occupation, and on the affirmation of the international right of unconditional and immediate self-determination or independence of the subjugated People, supported by its entire national base.

Thus, under the French-Spanish régime that is occupying our Country, and until we liberate from it, the internal division of our Country between “left” and “right” Basque parties in local elections is not only absurd but also suicidal. It is therefore an absolute necessity to reach to the establishment of this party of the Resistance, and to overcome the internal divisionism in the local and “autonomous” elections of our Country. Indeed, this strategic unity around the two indicated National and State affirmations of the Basque People is the precondition and the first step for our People’s liberation. Without taking that step and without reaching that unity, it is impossible for us to get out of the morass where we are.

Instead, the Pnv-Eta bureaucracies and their satellites Ea-EhBildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc.: creatures of the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation that subjugates our People, have grown and prosper in that régime, and they do in their turn recognize it as legitimate and democratic and give it the necessary “stability” so that it can perpetuate itself sine die. For these bureaucracies: real agencies of employment and corruption for their “connected” members, our town-halls and local institutions do only mean jobs and tasty salaries to benefit themselves from within the framework of the imperialistic legality that they have already accepted as the final port of arrival; even though they still do occasionally feign and lie – increasingly weakly and cynically – to our People about it. Their “post-electoral pacts” with the self-declared Spanish parties in our Country – according to them, all “legitimate and democratic” – in order to exclude their “Basque competitors”, being absolutely incompatible with any policy of anti-imperialistic unity, reaffirmation and liberation, do reveal the true reality of these mafias and guarantee the continuity of our domination; which is responded to at the popular level with spontaneous abstention in the face of this spectacle.

 

This popular position of absenteeism, which is the natural attitude that the subjugated Peoples do spontaneously adopt in rejection of the political fraud, and the totalitarian imposition and conditioning of imperialism, would immediately turn into enthusiastic and unanimous support for a genuine program of liberation, if their political classes were able to visualize it and then offer it to the People with honesty and humility. Therefore, “the bureaucracies” must understand that either they all accept to be united within this civic Movement, agglutinated under the only fundamental principle that makes it possible and constitutes it; or they will face that Movement, which will join the spontaneous popular abstention and will summon our People to an active total abstention in the face of the corrupt “Basque” divisionist bureaucracies: auxiliary local agents of French-Spanish imperialism.

The BMRNS is not just another party to further increase the division of the Country. Therefore, as long as that partisan division continues to be maintained by the liquidationist bureaucracy PNV-Eta and its satellites, and in places where that division is maintained, the position of the BMRNS will be one of active abstention against these traitors, of course, and not that of running against them with a candidacy of its own, since that would increase divisionism. As there has been said, we are not just another party and we do not propose even more division but to put an end to our artificial, unnecessary and suicidal internal division, as long as we remain under the military occupation of French-Spanish imperialism.

On the contrary, the Pnv-Eta bureaucracies do only seek the vote for their own corporate benefit and for the detriment of their “Basque competitors”, thereby making impossible any strategic accumulation of democratic forces, essential to achieve national independence. To vote for these “Basque” bureaucracies: materially and morally corrupt and ideologically ruined, perversely opposed to each other and that will then submit to an agreement with one of those aforementioned components of the imperialistic Party in our Country, is to feed the infernal mechanism created by French-Spanish imperialism so as to keep us divided and dominated: “divide and rule”.

Consequently, abstaining from supporting these bureaucracies and ceasing to vote for their candidates is an absolute and prior necessity in order to achieve our liberation; an objective that they have abandoned in their competition for the sole purpose of obtaining posts and salaries, dividing the patriotic vote imperialism for this purpose.

Refusing to see that this is so, can only be due to conscious complicity in corruption, or to foolish stupidity or folly. From here we make an urgent appeal on the Basque People to turn its back on these Pnv-Eta bureaucracies and their satellites Ea-Ehbildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc., and not to give them any vote, through a NATIONAL AND ACTIVE ABSTENTION.

RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION OR UNCONDITIONAL AND IMMEDIATE NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE OF THE BASQUE PEOPLE / EUSKAL HERRIA!

KINGDOM OF NABARRE: THE STATE OF THE BASQUE PEOPLE / EUSKAL HERRIA!

Army of occupation not even with music!

Spain not even with a republic! France not even with a monarchy!

TOTAL BOYCOTT OF THE IMPERIALISTS AND FASCISTS, AND THEIR RÉGIME OF MILITARY OCCUPATION!  –  AWAY WITH THEM!

LONG LIVE THE FREE BASQUE PEOPLE!!!