The unity of democratic parties is an essential value in the war on terrorism. On one side, that unity makes terrorists lose any hope that a change of government can mean an advantage for their criminal interests. On the other side, the government in power can keep its ground against terror without fearing that the opposition might use the effect of possible attacks as an electoral weapon. That desirable unity of political forces has nevertheless three limits that no government can overstep without risking the breakup of necessary democratic consensus. Those limits are the rule of law, the democratic legitimacy, and the dignity of the victims.
The first principle that every antiterrorist policy must uphold is legality. Fighting terror must always be within the strictest respect for the rule of law. Any action by a government breaking the law implies moral degradation of the antiterrorist policy and constitutes a serious strategic error that strengthens and gives legitimacy to the murderers’ actions. The sad experience with GAL in our country showed how counterproductive illegal actions by a state could become in order to defeat terror. If a government decides to break the law, the opposition party has a legitimate right to not endorse it and furthermore the political and moral duty to denounce it.
The second limit is the principle of legitimacy. An essential rule for all democracies is that no one can impose his will by violent means, blackmail, or extortion. That is why terrorists should never gain political advantage by the force of their attacks or because they stop perpetrating them. Terrorists do not have an ounce of democratic legitimacy therefore talks or political negotiations with them are absolutely out of the question. When a government opens a door for political negotiations with a terrorist organization, they cannot demand support from any democratic party for those negotiations and one can demand instead that they oppose it with maximum forcefulness.
The last principle that is essential to protect in the war on terror is the dignity of the victims. Unlike armed conflicts, when it comes to terrorism there are no two sides confronted, able to reconcile. In the case of terrorism it is only a few who kill, kidnap and threaten a majority that endures with democratic stoicism the criminal action with the only hope that the government protect them and that justice be served in court. In case that a terrorist group decides to abandon their criminal activity forgiveness can be invoked but that is a privilege that only the victims can grant, because when that pardon is granted arbitrarily by a government it becomes impunity and injustice. If a government offends the dignity of the victims by counting them out and granting pardons, the opposition party must always be on the victims’ side and not on that government’s side.
In my opinion, the dialog process and negotiation with ETA opened by Zapatero oversteps two limits that are essential in any antiterrorist policy: the democratic legitimacy and the respect for the dignity of the victims. Zapatero breaks away with the legitimacy of our democracy by allowing ETA’s comeback to the political institutions as the first political payback so that the terrorists stop killing. He also does it by giving political concessions to the terrorists, even if he tries to hide it under the cover of dialog among parties that in any case must include the terror party.
Zapatero offends the dignity of the victims when he offers pardons to the terrorists, something the victims directly oppose. It has been a long time since ETA missed the opportunity to deserve our clemency for the simple fact of stopping their killing machine. Too much innocent blood has been spilled, too much pain has been generated, too many widows, orphans and destroyed parents as to forget so soon, as to have to apologize to the assassins, as to give them an ultimate meaning to their war.
We all want to recuperate the unity among democratic parties in the war on terrorism. Unfortunately, we all could not be in the Pact for Liberty because there were parties like PNV or ERC that did not share some of those fundamental principles to defeat terror. Today PSOE seems to have decided to give in and not defend the rule of law, the democratic legitimacy, and the dignity of the victims. Nevertheless, nobody can invoke consensus to ask the People’s Party that it betrays those principles, too. On the contrary, it is more vital than ever that the People’s Party be firm in the defense of those principles, even if it means doing it all alone.
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