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Zapatero caves to bad element
Carlos Alberto Montaner.
Posted on Tue, Oct. 12, 2004 in The Miami
Herald.
One of the first actions taken by Prime
Minister José Luis Rodríguez
Zapatero after taking office was to withdraw
all Spanish troops from Iraq. Apparently,
this was done to keep an important electoral
promise made to some voters who were remarkably
anti-American and extremely uncomfortable
with Spain's participation in a conflict
that they saw as distant and unjust.
Zapatero's action was understandable, but
not what came later: On an official visit
to Tunisia, he asked other countries allied
with the United States to also leave Iraq.
A little earlier, he had canceled the transfer
of some old fighter planes and the sale
of armored cars to Colombia -- a democracy
that is fighting simultaneously against
the communist narco-guerrillas and the anticommunist
narco-guerrillas -- with the bizarre excuse
that he didn't want to encourage a war in
a sisterly Hispanic-American republic.
A similar outrage would be for the United
States to deny Spain ''sensitive'' information
or the secret surveillance devices that
Spain needs to deal with Basque terrorists,
with the excuse that Washington does not
wish to get involved in a civil war that
arose from the nationalist desire of a segment
of Spain's society.
Weak leader
Does Zapatero's government have a profoundly
pacifist vocation? It doesn't seem so, judging
from an item in the Oct. 3 edition of the
Galician newspaper La Voz: The Izar shipyards
hope to emerge from a financial crisis by
selling warships to countries such as Iran,
Libya or Cuba, or to whoever will buy them
regardless of the regime in charge or the
warships' potential use. What's important
is not Zapatero's alleged antiwar idealism
but his wanting to please workers who don't
want to lose their jobs.
Therein lies the key to Zapatero's behavior:
He is a weak leader, without firm convictions,
who is willing to make any type of concession
to stay in power. Under such circumstances,
he has been forced to make deals with the
secessionist nationalists, the communists
of the United Left and the labor unions,
to whom he must pay a hefty toll for their
backing in Parliament, a support that allows
him to achieve a majority both on the national
scene and within the Catalonian regional
government.
Fortunately, in the case of Cuba, Zapatero
has managed to resist pressure from his
communist allies to ''normalize'' relations
with the Castro dictatorship. A potential
first step in that direction would have
been to close the doors to the Spanish Embassy
in Havana to dissidents during the official
celebration of Hispanic Day, observed today.
Temporary backbone?
This would have broken the solid front
of the European Union countries designed
to support Cuban dissidents in their time
of travail, which began last March with
the jailing of scores of writers, journalists,
independent librarians and others accused
of undermining the state.
This firmness, however, may be supplanted
for an intense campaign inside the E.U.
to abandon the common policy supporting
Cuban dissidents formulated in 1996 on the
initiative of the Spanish government headed
at the time by José María
Aznar.
It is not a question, naturally, of Zapatero
or his foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos,
being radical leftists. They are not. And
they are not wrong in their assessment of
the monstrous nature of Fidel Castro's regime,
although the new Spanish ambassador to Cuba,
engineer Carlos Alonso Zaldívar,
arrived in Havana convinced that the Caribbean
communist modality is sweeter than -- and
different from -- the sinister satrapies
of the Soviet era.
The problem is that we're looking at a
weak and profoundly opportunistic government
that dances to the tune played by its political
partners, without weighing the consequences
of their actions or considering the harm
they might cause. Americans and Colombians
already have had a taste of those dangerous
characteristics. Now is the turn of Europeans
and the disappointed Cuban people.
http://www.firmaspress.com
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