Thread: Spaniards Start Voting (with concerns over immigration)

Spaniards Start Voting in General Election Overshadowed by ETA Killing

Sunday , March 09, 2008

AP
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MADRID, Spain —
Spaniards started voting in a general election Sunday, after a divisive campaign dominated by a cooling economy and concerns over immigration but jolted by a last-minute killing by suspected Basque separatists.

Public opinion polls suggest a win by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists although by a margin that would leave them short of an absolute majority in parliament -- as is the case now.

The voting was overshadowed by Friday's shooting death of former a Socialist town councilor in the Basque region. The attack was blamed on the militant Basque group ETA, but the timing was reminiscent of an election-eve massacre by Islamic militants who killed 191 people in a string of bombings against commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004.

Zapatero came to power then amid a wave of voter outrage at ruling conservatives who blamed the attacks on ETA even as evidence of Islamic involvement mounted -- widely seen as a bid to deflect perceptions that the attack was al-Qaida's revenge for the government's support of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

This campaign was dominated by concerns over the Spanish economy, one of Europe's great success stories with more than a decade of robust growth. But now it is cooling amid rising unemployment and high inflation and an end to a boom in the construction sector, the main engine of growth.

Both main parties also clashed over immigration, with the conservatives saying Zapatero had made Spain a magnet for destitute foreigners in search of a better life, draining resources for things like schools and health care.

The conservative candidate for prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has vowed to make immigrants sign a contract obliging them to respect Spanish customs and learn the language. Zapatero's party called this position xenophobic.

Two polls released Monday -- the last day pre-election surveys could be published -- gave Zapatero's party a 4 percentage-point lead.

However, that was before Friday's killing of Isaias Carrasco, a former Socialist councilor in the Basque town of Mondragon.

No one expects the tide-turning upheaval of 2004, but commentators say it is conceivable the killing could give some kind of boost to either of the two main parties: sympathy benefiting Zapatero, or a backlash against him for having negotiated in vain with ETA in 2006, only to see the group kill a member of his party two days before the election.

Security forces are on maximum alert and turnout is seen as key; popular wisdom says the higher it is, the more it will benefit the Socialists. Their backers are seen as more prone to abstentions, whereas conservative supporters are more loyal to their party and likely to get out and vote.

There are 35.1 million eligible voters in Spain.

At stake are the 350-seat Congress of Deputies, the lower chamber of parliament, and the 208-seat Senate. It is the composition of the lower house that decides who forms the next government.

Were Zapatero to win by the margin forecast in the latest polls, he would fall short of an absolute majority and have to form a minority government, just as he did in 2004 with support from smaller, regional-based parties in Catalonia and elsewhere.

Carrasco's eldest daughter, Sandra, 20, appealed Saturday for massive turnout as a way to defy ETA.

"I call on those who want to show solidarity with my father and with our pain to vote en masse Sunday and tell the murderers that we are not going to take a single step backward," she said.

Her father's killing was widely seen as an ETA show of force designed to counter government assertions that the group is a weak shadow of what it was in its violent heyday in the 1980s and 90s.

Ramon Cotarelo, a professor of political science at Madrid's Complutense University, said ETA is saying "the only to way to settle this is to negotiate because we cannot be exterminated. You cannot conquer us."


http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly ... 51,00.html

It's everywhere folks. WAKE UP AMERICAN CANDIDATES

Both main parties also clashed over immigration, with the conservatives saying Zapatero had made Spain a magnet for destitute foreigners in search of a better life, draining resources for things like schools and health care.

Same words in England, Wales, Ireland...on down the line with any country facing uncontrolled immigration....legally or illegally. People in all these countries are folding under the weight of all the needy people.....quality of life is doing a huge nosedive and there's not enough work to support them all.

Yep we will eventually see riots around the world over this if these governments don't get it under control.

I question what's the point of sending aid in the forms of food and money to these third world countries when they continue to send their poor to other countries anyways. That money would be better sent enforcing our law and defending our borders.