Posted on 03/22/2009 12:32:43 PM PDT by J Aguilar
Spains Justice Minister Resigns
By VICTORIA BURNETT Published: February 23, 2009
MADRID Spains justice minister resigned Monday after a political uproar erupted over a recent hunting trip with a judge who is investigating members of the conservative opposition party.
The minister, Mariano Fernández Bermejo, was on the same deer-hunting expedition in Andalusia as Baltasar Garzón, a high-profile terrorism judge involved in a corruption investigation...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Peculiar the data that brings our fellow member erskine to the blog, on the presence of the public prosecutor Delgado - the one that offered the deal to the defendants of the Tigris operation [against Islamic terrorism] - in the hunting in Jaen, next to [minister of Justice] Bermejo and [Judge] Garzón. It had to be a very interesting hunting indeed, considering everything what it has happened as a result of it. What was decided there?
As peculiar are the internal movements detected in the Socialist party, where it seems that certain clans have decided to take control definitively. I already said at the time when Jerónimo Saavedra charged against Bermejo, that the whole issue regarding that hunting stank. Some participant in the blog suggested that Saavedra proceeded independently, and that those declarations were nothing more than a small kick in the shinbone that the present mayor of Las Palmas sent to Zapatero. Nevertheless, the appointment to highest post in the Ministry of Justice of Caamaño, apparently related so well to the masonic circles as Saavedra himself, points out to a perfectly planned operation, in which Bermejo would have played a scapegoat role. In chess terms, the play is called gambit: to sacrifice a piece in order to secure a winning position. From now on, we can expect that the plans of social change and modification of the territorial structure of Spain will be accelerated.
In the other end of the [political] spectrum, the play seems to develop following the same course. If it is analyzed what it has happened in the Gürtel operation, we see that what in principle seemed a general cause against the [right wing] PP has derived, in last instance, and as Emilio Campmany already foretold, in a "blocking" (continuing with chess terms) of the two unique pieces, both regional barons, that could put in hardships [PP leader] Rajoy (and [the Madrilean mayor] Gallardón) after next Sunday elections: [Madrilean regional government president] Esperanza Aguirre and [Valencia regional government president] Paco Camps are, at the moment, under siege. The flood of data aerated on presumed scandals of corruption through the [pro-Socialist] PRISA group referrers, mainly, to those two regions.
On Rajoy, by all means, not a stain. It does not seem accidental; therefore, that Mariano [Rajoy] took a walk yesterday to the radio news channel of that same media group that, in theory, is trying to laminate the PP. Does it have something to do what it is happening in the PP with "affiliation" of some of its leaders? I do not know it. But some movements are quite peculiar, not very distant in time we have the taking of control of the Basque PP, after kicking Maria San Gil [she risks her life supporting the complete fulfilling of the Constitution, against the opinion of the regional Nationalists]. It is peculiar, for example, that Alfonso Alonso, right wing mayor of Vitoria [in the Basque region] until the last municipal elections, appointed at that time as ombudsman of the city of Vitoria the great master of the Iradier lodge, author of the book "Laicism, a strategy for freedom". Checking such maneuvers, and checking the obstacles set up by the PP in certain regions to the objectors of Education for the Citizenship, it is difficult not to ask oneself if those obstacles respond to something more than to mere stupidity.
I shall declare that the masonic connections of each one do not matter at all to me. Nor it matters to me whether somebody is a mason; nor I believe that a unique masonry exists, but many different groups, some of which deeply hate each other; nor I believe that the majority of those lodges are more than just a club of friends who lean on each other to prosper.
The problem is that, in some of those circles, those friends have begun, in addition, to play social engineers, which, if it were done publicly, it would not raise major problems. As Cesar Vidal told in La Linterna yesterday, if the masons of this country decided to found a political party and to openly concur to the elections, nothing would be objected: what God (or the Great Architect) gives, Saint Peter blesses, and the citizens would choose as representatives whoever they desire.
The wrong thing occurs when such kind of connections stay in discreet background. And if above that, those connections extend transversely through the political parties, then the democratic vote of the citizens runs the serious risk of becoming a farce.
Because, when a voter of United Left [the Communists, now almost absorbed by Zapatero] (or the PP, or the Socialist Party) chooses his representatives, it does that thinking that his representative is going to defend a certain electoral program, or a certain ideology of radical left. And what that voter has the right to expect is that his representative makes decisions based on that program or on that ideology. But when the decisions of that representative are conditioned by a transversal group that decides in a lodge (or in an office, or in a board of directors), then we are before an electoral swindle.
To put a present time example: when the decisions are taken in a hunting, instead of in the Parliament or in the competent institutions, the same essence of the democratic system is being perverted.
I insist: neither I believe in hidden universal conspiracies nor in concealed sanhedrins that direct the world with a bugle blow, nor it matters to me what everyone decides to be. But, as citizen, I have the right to know, before voting, to whom have sworn obedience each one of the candidates who represent me. And, once well known the obedience of each one, I will decide by myself who I prefer. For a system to be truly democratic, it is an essential requisite the respect of the right of the citizens to know who they are exactly voting.
If that does not happen, thus; that is, if the true centers of decision are hidden to the citizens, then the democracy stops being it, to become a concealed oligarchy.
And I do not like oligarchic regimes.
Many PP members are like what Americans refer to as a RINO - las siglas de Republicans In Name Only. They keep the party affiliation, but their only goal is to curry favor with the opposition party that is in power.
Yes, play both sides for the benefit of a shadow middle. The oldest trick of faux democracy. The only thing I can add is to keep asking the old Italian question whenever politics turns odd, ‘Qui paga (who pays)?’
This is a digression but here is a story on growing Spanish unemployment: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=7143162
Well, let’s check a sign: Zapatero’s advisors told on Saturday that our forces would withdraw from Kosovo when it would be agreed with the rest of the participants in the stabilization force. Defence minister Carmen Chacon told Sunday that the schedule she planned to withdraw them will be fulfilled. Is she acting independently? Is that a little coup inside the government? How can she do that?
Moreover, another sign: minister Caamaño, as Zapatero’s legal advisor, was the person responsible for the inclusion of the word “nation” to define Catalonia in the preamble of the its new regional statute.
I agree. I would say the same thing about our system here.
Wow! One person can make decisions like pulling out military forces and the status of an entire region. I agree, it doesn’t sound like a representative process.
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