Tuesday, March 05, 2019

Either it's water or it's dry

EN ES
Joan Coscubiela
21/02/2019 El diario.es EFE

ENGLISH
The double talk has been the most constant component in the pro-independence strategy, saying one thing and the opposite, playing cunning to maintain its fiction

Sorry for the truism of the title, but I found it more pertinent to start with a truism than with an oxymoron like "dry water". Although both formulas serve to explain what I consider the most important, in the political sphere, of everything that has been said during the first days of a trial that, at times, is so difficult to distinguish from the election campaign.

After listening to the allegations of the accused persons and their lawyers in favor of the right to self-determination, Joaquin Forn's statement - by the way very well articulated - offered us a moment of great political significance. The person who was minister of home affairs has affirmed that the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (DUI) was only read, not voted. A line of defense followed later by Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull and others when they referred to that action as a simple political statement with a vocation for negotiation.

We are witnessing a strategy that in the juridical level can be considered intelligent but that in the political level confirms that the independence movement continues to play on cunning and fiction and remains trapped between two drives: survival or suicide. Everything points to the fact that during the long sessions of the trial we will see more statements reiterating that skilful reading of the facts. To the point of making us doubt whether the DUI existed and was only a mirage that we all saw, especially the pro-independence, but never existed.

It should not surprise us, because the double talk has been the most constant component in the pro-independence strategy, saying one thing and the opposite, playing cunning to maintain its fiction. Saying one thing to its followers to demonstrate the strength and solvency of the procés and at the same time the opposite to feign legality.

The examples of "dry water" of the pro-independence movement appear everywhere. First the parish was made to believe that the elections of September 2015 had been the referendum that legitimized the DUI in 18 months, and then, upon the expiration of this period, to affirm the opposite as an argument to propose the referendum as the only option. Remember: "referendum or referendum".

In the same days when Santiago Vidal raised the morale of the troops, assuring that they already had the fiscal data of the entire population, obtained illegally, to build their own treasury, other pro-independence leaders affirmed that everything would be done within the strictest legality. That, remember, happened every day. Even some prestigious jurist dared to explain that the procés strategy was to pass from one law, the Spanish, to another, the Catalan one. As if legality was a free buffet in which each one chooses the laws that he likes and fulfills, while discarding those that he decides to disobey. All this in the name of a supposed superiority of democracy over the law, the great argument, deeply undemocratic, still used these days by President Quim Torra.

The zenith of the astute strategy of "dry water" was lived on October 27, 2017. At the very same time -in a literal sense- in which in the towns and cities thousands of people celebrated the effective arrival of independence -because the independent leaders and related media assured thus - and in the Parliament hundreds of mayors waving about their batons sanctioned the proclamation of the Catalan republic, the pro-independence representatives in the Board of Parliament recorded in the minutes of the last meeting that the resolution that they were going to vote did not have any legal effect.

You can understand that argument before the Board of the Parliament and now before the Supreme Court as a legitimate defense in the face of possible and future legal consequences of their actions. What is incomprehensible in terms of political honesty is that, 16 months after recording that lack of legal force, the resolution continues to be used to legitimize the independence strategy. And to insist on the democratic mandate of October 1 and the threat to reactivate the unilateral declaration of independence of 27-O. Either it is water, or it is dry.

This great ability of the pro-independence procés to sell dry water would not have been possible without the inestimable collaboration of the media. The "Ithaca Media Division" has been a determining factor in consolidating the stories that the independence movement wanted to impose at each moment. Even to resolve their internal struggles, punishing those who dared to distance themselves from the straight path that at every moment marked the procás direction.

During these days we are paying attention to the efforts of the media in the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (CCMA) to sell us that on October 27 there was only one public reading of the resolution and no voting that had legal effects. Nothing to object, if it were not for the fact that during so many months they have sold us shamelessly otherwise and have been instrumental in the creation and survival of this fiction. And they have been as well a key factor in achieving that the sudden changes of position and the contradictions of the independence movement could appear to the eyes of its supporters as a great political skill. The same communication technique that has allowed them to see a general strike where there were neither workers nor stoppage in the production of goods and services, only a lockout of the public administration convened by the Government.

All this with the inestimable help of the "Brunete Media Division", which has had an identical behavior to the Ithaca division although its objectives were the opposite. Magnifying the behaviors of the procés supporters to denounce them and demand a firm hand against them, they have also contributed much to consolidating the dry water story. Although all this may seem things of the past, I think on the contrary that we are facing one of the keys to the future; the other will be the sentence issued by the Supreme Court.

That the pro-independence movement abandons this strategy of "dry water" is a determining factor in finding a way out through dialogue. Unless the case might be that, after the trial, some are tempted to "reactivate" the democratic mandate of October 1 or the implementation of the resolution of 27-O. Or they pose again, as in 2015, that the next autonomous elections will be a new plebiscite with referendum strength.

Hopefully the allegations of the accused about the lack of an effective Unilateral Declaration of Independence will convince the Court and serve to avoid the exaggerated and, in my opinion, unjustifiable punishments requested for them. In addition to the human impact that the prison means, with the independence leaders in prison there is no solution, not even a way out of this immense quagmire.

And hopefully the pro-independence movement will abandon once and for all the cunning and fiction in which they continue to be installed. Of course, it is not a question of giving up anything, simply saying to the public whether it is water or dry. The two things at once are impossible, you cannot deceive everyone for so long without it having serious consequences for everyone.

SPANISH

O es agua o es seca

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