Basque parties applaud Bildu's ballot inclusion

The Constitutional Court's decision, reached late on Thursday night, to overturn a Supreme Court ruling banning the entire slate of candidates put forward by the Bildu coalition of radical abertzale parties for the May 22 local elections was greeted by the leader of the conservative Basque Nationalist Party, Iñigo Urkullu, on Friday as good news "not for Bildu, but for the whole of Basque society."

The Socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero accepted the court's decision and suggested that it could mark a step forward along the road that will lead to the end of the terrorist organization ETA.

But conservative Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy termed the ruling "a backward step" in the fight against ETA. The PP had urged the government to impugn the entire lists of Bildu candidacies after police and Civil Guard reports concluded that the grouping maintained links with ETA.

In one document, handed to the Attorney General's Office, investigators stated their belief that Sortu, a new party with which the abertzale left had hoped to fight the May 22 elections, was a device of ETA, born of an agreement between the legitimate abertzale party Eusko Alkartasuna (EA) and the outlawed political wing of ETA, Batasuna. "Sortu is at the service of ETA," the report concluded.

Bildu was formed in April after the Supreme Court banned Sortu on the basis of the police investigations. The new grouping is an electoral alliance between EA and another legal party, Alternatiba, with a number of independent candidates.

The government had previously expressed its concern that many of these independents, even without terrorism-related arrests or links to other abertzale parties, would still be "easily recognized" by voters in the Basque Country as pro-ETA.

Sortu made a symbolic break with ETA as part of its bid to gain legality by rejecting the use of violence in its charter, but the main political parties and judicial authorities have repeatedly expressed their skepticism over whether the break is genuine or merely a cosmetic device to field Batasuna members under a different name. "They are the candidates of the succession of Batasuna-ETA," said the solicitor general, Joaquín de Fuentes Bardají, on filing the successful legal challenge against Bildu in the Supreme Court.

After a stalemate in the Second Chamber of the country's highest court, the decision passed to a plenary session of Constitutional Court magistrates, comprised of seven chosen by the ruling Socialist Party and four by the PP. The decision, which permits Bildu to stand for seats in more than 250 municipalities in the Basque Country and neighboring Navarre region, was taken by six votes to five.

Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba called accusations of government pressure on the magistrates "insidious."

"We have reached this point by the hand of the rule of law, acting with fortitude, and we are witnessing the beginning of the end of ETA. And by the rule of law we will finish with ETA," he said.

Urkullu tempered the festive spirit in the Basque Country with a challenge to Bildu in a television interview on Friday. The PNV leader called on the coalition to condemn a hypothetical attack by ETA, something it patently failed to do after a shootout between two ETA suspects and gendarmes in La Creuse, France, last month. Bildu leaders merely "rejected the incident."

"I hope they won't have to make a statement because there have been no attacks," Urkullu said. "But if there are, and they do not, society will come down hard on them for their deceit."

The Socialist Basque regional premier, Patxi López, echoed Urkullu's words: "If Bildu wants [...] to be viewed credibly, it must take a further step and demand ETA's definitive and unconditional disappearance, not just the upholding of a ceasefire."

Meanwhile, Carlos Garaikoetxea, former premier of the Basque Country and founder of Eusko Alkartasuna, described as a "despicable lie" a Civil Guard report in which he is accused of having had a meeting with ETA to discuss electoral strategies.

The document was handed in to the Constitutional Court on Thursday, the final day available to the justices to rule on the eligibility of the Bildu slates. Just after midnight on Thursday, when the court's decision was made public, thousands of people celebrated in Bilbao's Arenal square. Oskar Matute. a member of one of the Bildu coalition partners, Alternatiba, recalled the long list of groups which have been banned under the Political Parties Law, saying: "Let's not forget those who have been the scapegoat of political decisions. They wanted to see us bound and gagged."