Elections this weekend in Spain

I was watching the second debate between Zapatero and Rajoy last weekend, and couldn’t help but think: where are all the other political parties. Spain hasn’t slid off into a 2 party system yet. has it. I can imagine that all the other parties will have a hard time getting their message out. aaah democracy: the story is black or white. You only have 2 options. You are with us or against us. yes/no.

In 2004 i was in belgium during the general elections. I saw on tv the bombings on the 11th of March. Well, no that’s not really true. I saw Angel Acebes (PP) declare that the attack were carried out by ETA. this was at 13h (the attacks happend at 8h in the morning). Not that they were maybe thinking that it could have been them. No, the PP government told the country it was ETA. After 5 hours of confusion and chaos, they knew! it was ETA.

Now, off course they would have wanted it to be ETA. They have been really tough against this terrorist organization. It’s one of their prime directives. The PP is after all Franco’s legacy. So those attacks would have been a gift from the gods for the PP if it would have been an ETA attack. (Opposed to being an AlQaida or anything else attack). It would a been the “rally around the flag effect” at it’s most purest form. When Bismarck declared war on France it was to unite all the german kingdoms into one. Here it would have only 200 dead, for the PP to become absolute leadersof spain once more. But whishing that something is true, doesn’t make it so.

This is something i do not understand. Anyone with just half a brain cell would realize that this would backfire, right? These elections were in 2004 not 1904. Mass media, bloggers, indymedia,… they were nothing new. Text messaging spiked on the days between the attentados an the elections How did they think they could pull this off? Well they almost did.

Contrary to Popular belief the 2004 elections were not a glorious victory over evil the lying bastards of the PP. the PSOE (Spain’s mainstream socialist party) got only 5% more votes then the PP. 43% against 38%. When you look at the elections results you’ll see that the Madrid and it’s surrounding communidades voted PP. That’s were the bombings happened. I don’t really believe there is much reason to party there. After the country found out that PP was shamlessy trying those 200 dead to slingshot themselves into another term in power close to 10 million went out and voted for them. how can that be?

I am sorry i have no answer for that, it just makes me curious about these elections with debates that look like the’ve temporarily replaced the whole salsa rosa press.

Who do you think is gonna win this beauty contest?

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