The victor in Sunday’s Spanish general election was Al-Qaeda. The decision of the electorate to abandon the center-right Popular Party, which before last week’s Madrid massacre had been comfortably ahead in the opinion polls, will have extremely dangerous consequences for elections in all other democracies. Terrorists will now believe that they can bomb any democracy into electoral submission.
This foolish and emotional decision is in stark contrast to the immense dignity with which Spaniards initially reacted to the slaughter of 200 innocents last Thursday. The opposition Socialists were shameless in their accusation that the government was trying to cover up Al-Qaeda involvement by blaming the Basque terrorist group ETA. In fact in the hours following the horrific attacks, it was perfectly reasonable to suspect ETA. In December, Basque terrorists planted a bomb on a train and were caught with another in a rucksack similar to those which ripped apart the Madrid commuter trains.
And there simply was no cover-up. After Thursday, the Interior Ministry mounted press conferences with unprecedented frequency trying to pass on the facts as they became known, something unheard-of in any other democracy. Among these was the discovery of the white van with seven detonators and an audiotape with verses from the Qur’an. The retiring Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar at no time ruled out Al-Qaeda involvement. Against this the Socialist party mounted manipulative demonstrations outside the Popular Party offices claiming that the government was seeking to conceal Al-Qaeda evidence because it feared voters would punish it for backing the Bush invasion of Iraq and committing 1,300 troops to the Coalition occupation.
It is a sign of the still immature nature of Spain’s democracy that the voters bought this pernicious nonsense and voted with emotion rather than common sense. It would have been far better had the election been postponed to give time for people to calm down and gather their wits.
Spaniards were by no means alone in opposing Bush’s invasion of Iraq. However, the mature reaction when they themselves became victims would have been to stick with their prior electoral intentions.
The upshot is that Al-Qaeda, which it seems increasingly clear were behind last week’s savage butchery, have won a stunning victory. They have seen how they can panic and manipulate the electorate of a comfortable democracy. Now they will be convinced that terrorism works. From now on, any democratic state whose government has already or will in future dare to back the crushing of Al-Qaeda and its poisonous offspring can expect to be targeted. The terrorists have proved that they can manipulate the democratic process by unbridled violence and fear.
