The people of Catalonia held a vote on independence from Spain on November 9. The Catalan government reported on November 10 that of 5.4 million Catalans and resident foreigners who were eligible to vote, a total of 2.3 million people participated. The vast majority, 80.7 per cent, voted for independence, it added. Voters were asked two questions: whether Catalonia should be a state, and if they replied yes, they were asked if it should be an independent state. Just over 10 per cent voted yes to the first question and no to the second and 4.5 per cent voted no to both questions. Final results will be published at the end of the month. The vote went ahead despite a great deal of interference from the Spanish government. When the Catalan government issued the decree to hold a referendum on September 27, the Spanish government appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled against a referendum. On October 14, Catalan President Artur Mas proposed a process of citizen participation as an alternative for the original referendum. The Spanish government announced that it would block the effort by appealing to the Spanish Constitutional Court. The case was heard November 4 and the court provisionally suspended the vote. Nonetheless, the Catalan government announced it would push forward with the vote, in defiance of the Constitutional Court of Spain. Polling stations were only staffed by 41,000 volunteers and registration for voting took place right at the polling stations. Anti-independence parties still chose to boycott the non- referendum, claiming that these arrangements to delegitimize the vote and discourage democratic participation would skew the results in favour of a break from Spain. Catalan President Mas, speaking on November 9 called the vote a total success and a lesson in democracy, spelled out in capital letters. He said his government would now push to hold an official referendum and seek international support to persuade the Spanish government to allow it to go ahead. We deserve to vote in a legal and binding referendum and this is what we are going to try to do, Mas stated. He added that he would send a letter to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, urging him to confront the Catalan question with a formal, binding referendum on independence. We want to decide a new political future. All nations have a right to do so and mature democracies respect that, said Mas. Spains Reaction The Spanish government, having done its best to block and sabotage the vote, shamelessly criticized it as illegitimate. Justice Minister Rafael Catala dismissed the vote as fruitless and useless and said it was devoid of any kind of democratic validity. Furthermore, having barred the Catalan government from carrying out a formal referendum, thus preventing it from using state resources to carry out the vote, the Spanish government is hoping to criminalize the Catalan government for some alleged irregularities. For example, state prosecutors are investigating whether Catalan authorities breached court injunctions by opening polling stations in schools and other public buildings, said Catala. Meanwhile, Ferran Civit, a member of the Secretariat of the umbrella organization of Catalonian pro-independence forces, told the news agency Prensa Latina that despite all the blocks put in their way, the vote was carried out in a scrupulously democratic way. He asserted that what prevented the normal conditions for an electoral process from taking place was the action of the Spanish government to block a formal referendum. Britains Reaction Asked about Catalonias symbolic referendum, British Prime Minister David Cameron said London wants Spain to stay united. Scotland held a referendum on September 18, in which 44.7 per cent voted for independence from the United Kingdom, despite blackmail and other interference from the British government. Cameron went on to dismiss the substance of the issue, that a majority of Catalonians do not consider themselves part of Spain and have been unjustly blocked from exercising decision-making power on this question. Our belief about referendums and things like that is these things should be done through the proper constitutional and legal frameworks. They should be done within them, and not outside them, he said, conspicuously omitting mention of his own governments misdeeds in the Scottish referendum, or the recent shenanigans of the Spanish government.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 03:07:10 +0000
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