Juan Jose Ibarretxe
Juan José Ibarretxe Markuartu (Llodio, Álava, March 15, 1957) is a Spanish politician of Basque nationalist ideology. He belongs to the Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ-PNV).
From January 2, 1999 to May 7, 2009, he was the lendakari of the Basque Government (Basque Country), being the third Basque lendakari of democracy and the fifth in the history of the autonomous government of Euskadi. He has been lehendakari for three legislatures, always leading coalition governments.
Childhood and training
He was born in the Basque town of Llodio (Álava), on March 15, 1957, into a working-class family. The characteristics of his hometown were decisive for his political commitment: once a small town characteristic of the Basque rural society, which quickly reached a high level of industrialization from the 1960s and which became the second most populous town in Álava. He studied high school in his hometown and later studied Economic and Business Sciences at the Faculty of Sarriko (Bilbao), then belonging to the University of Bilbao (which became the University of the Basque Country in 1980).
After graduating, he worked briefly in private business, before dedicating himself full-time to politics after becoming mayor of his hometown. He also worked in the Basque Parliament's Economic and Budget Commission, where he would later return as a parliamentarian, and then as president.
On October 25, 2010, Juan José Ibarretxe presented his doctoral thesis "Ethical Principle, Democratic Principle and Sustainable Human Development: Fundamentals for a democratic model, directed by Francisco Javier Caballero Harriet (Professor of Philosophy of Law) and Luis Mariano Negrón Portillo (Dean of the Faculty of Law and Professor of the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico).
Ibarretxe's doctoral thesis was submitted for evaluation by a panel made up of José Manuel Castell, Michael Keating, Jorge Tapia, Miguel Herrero de Miñón and Gurutz Jauregi.
Mayor, regional councilor and parliamentarian
Ibarretxe began his political career in 1979 by joining the Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ-PNV). After four years of militancy, the PNV presented him as a candidate for mayor of Llodio in the municipal elections of 1983, the second of democracy. He obtained 31.5% of the votes and 7 councilors (compared to 23% for the PNV in the previous elections of 1979) and became mayor, even without having the PNV an absolute majority (7 councilors out of 21 members of the municipal corporation), a position he held until 1987.
In 1987, after the split from Eusko Alkartasuna (EA), Ibarretxe lost the elections (broken link available at Internet Archive; see history, first and last version). before Pablo Gorostiaga, from Herri Batasuna (HB), who obtained 8 councilors, against the 4 of the PNV.
Ibarretxe combined his position as mayor with his presence in the General Meetings of Álava (where he was attorney between 1983 and 1994, and president between 1986 and 1991) and in the Basque Parliament, for which he was elected a member in 1984.
Two years after his accession to the Basque Parliament, he was appointed president of the Economy and Budgets Commission, a responsibility he held during three legislatures (II, III and IV), until January 4, 1995, when, after the In the regional elections, José Antonio Ardanza appointed him vicelehendakari of his government and Minister of Finance and Public Administration (5th Legislature).
Vicelendakari
The government headed by Ardanza in the V Legislature was supported by a coalition agreement between the PNV, Eusko Alkartasuna and the PSE-EE (PSOE) (which would last until the summer of 1998). Ibarretxe was Vicelendakari until the end of the legislature, in 1999. Since 1994 he had held the presidency of the Economic and Financial Commission of the Council of the University of the Basque Country, at the same time that he was also coordinator of the seminar Euzkadi in the European Union of the Sabino Arana Foundation, linked to the PNV.
As Minister of Finance and Public Administration, Ibarretxe was the head of the Basque Government delegation in the negotiation for the renewal of the Basque Economic Agreement and the calculation of the corresponding quota (the amount that is returned annually the Basque Treasuries to the central Treasury to contribute to the expenses generated by the powers not transferred from the State and the common services, since most of what the Basque Treasuries collect, the entirety of the taxes, is used to finance the powers assumed), between March and May 1997. This negotiation, in which he faced the then Second Vice President of the Government, Rodrigo Rato, was framed within the agreement between the Popular Party and the PNV for the investiture of José María Aznar as president of the Government in 1996. As a result, the Treasuries of the historical territories achieved practically full regulatory and collection capacity on all taxes, except excise taxes (alcohol, tobacco and gasoline) and VAT.
Lendakari
He has been Lendakari for three terms, always heading coalition governments.
6th Legislature
The V legislature was the last presided over by José Antonio Ardanza, since he decided to leave the first political line and not stand for re-election.
Thanks to his success as a negotiator in the renewal of the Basque Economic Agreement and the support of Xabier Arzalluz, top leader of the PNV as president of the Euzkadi Buru Batzar, the National Assembly of the PNV appointed Juan José Ibarretxe as candidate for Lendakari in the regional elections of October 25, 1998, following the tradition of the PNV in which the presidency of the party and the highest institutional representation are separated. The elections were held shortly after ETA declared a "total and indefinite" truce (September 18, 1998), parallel to the signing, six days earlier, of the Estella Pact, agreed upon by various political and social organizations in the Basque Country., Navarra and the French Basque Country, among which were all the Basque nationalist parties and unions and also the United Left (IU). In those elections his party obtained 27.28% of the votes cast and 21 seats.
On January 2, 1999, Lendakari (the third in democracy, after Carlos Garaikoetxea and José Antonio Ardanza) was sworn in. He was the first Lendakari from Alava and the youngest elected to date (41 years old). He had the support of nationalist formations: the PNV itself, Eusko Alkartasuna (EA) and Euskal Herritarrok (EH) (electoral platform established on October 25, 1998 by Herri Batasuna and other organizations of the abertzale left ). In March, a government pact was reached between the three nationalist forces, forming a coalition government between the PNV and EA. Later, in May, a legislature agreement was signed with EH. for the benefit of politics, which meant, for some political leaders, such as Javier Jimeno Torres, a member of Izquierda Unida de Navarra, that through this pact "the nationalist leaders are tied hand and foot to the PNV policy".
The Abertzale support for the investiture and the subsequent legislature agreement were possible thanks to the Pact of Estella, which the three parties had signed. However, ETA broke its ceasefire on November 27, 1999, accusing the PNV and EA of having breached an alleged agreement, denied by those responsible for the PNV and EA, which they would have reached in June 1998, before the signing of the Pact of Estella. On January 21, 2000, ETA exploded a car bomb loaded with 20 kg of dynamite in the Virgen del Puerto neighborhood of Madrid, an attack in which the lieutenant colonel of the quartermaster Pedro Antonio Blanco was assassinated. This forced Ibarretxe to suspend his legislature pact with EH. It was not, however, until after the assassination by ETA of the Alava socialist leader Fernando Buesa and his bodyguard, the ertzaina Jorge Díez (February 22, 2000), when the pact was broken. definitely.
The breakdown of the parliamentary agreement and the subsequent abandonment of the chamber by EH in September (which announced that it would only return to the Basque Parliament in Vitoria on "specific occasions") left the PNV-EA government in a parliamentary minority. After several months of parliamentary precariousness, due to the active opposition of socialists and popular groups and the impossibility of approving laws due to the lack of parliamentary support (the 2001 budgets could not be approved and those of the previous year had to be extended), he announced early elections for on May 13, 2001. The legislature that ended had been the shortest in the Basque Parliament since the arrival of democracy, and ended with high degrees of political tension and a renewed offensive by the terrorist organization ETA, which in 2000 alone assassinated 23 people.
VII Legislature
The electoral campaign of 2001 was the hardest in the history of the Basque Country, confronting two political blocs with clearly differentiated proposals. On the one hand, the nationalist coalition PNV-EA, with Ibarretxe as a Lendakari candidate, presented an openly sovereignist program to overcome the statutory and constitutional frameworks and favor self-determination. On the other, the Popular Party (PP) (led by Jaime Mayor Oreja) in collaboration with the PSE-EE (PSOE) (led by Nicolás Redondo Terreros) proposed a common discourse in defense of the Constitution and the Statute as an irreplaceable framework to end with the terrorist problem, in the belief that they could oust nationalism from the presidency of the Basque Country.
In the May elections, the PNV and Eusko Alkartasuna presented themselves in coalition and obtained 42.7% of the votes and 33 seats (26 seats for the PNV and 7 seats for the EA). The Popular Party and the PSE-EE (PSOE) added 32 seats. After the ETA truce was broken, the Abertzale left, represented by Euskal Herritarrok, lost 7 of its 14 seats. Ezker Batua (EB) won three seats.
Ibarretxe was sworn in as Lendakari on June 12, 2001, in a second vote, with the support of 35 parliamentarians (32 from the PNV-EA coalition —an EA deputy arrived late for the session and was unable to vote— and the three from EB). The government, which began with advisers only from the PNV and EA, was expanded with an EB adviser, Javier Madrazo, in September 2001.
The banning of Batasuna (an organization in which EH had been refounded in June 2001) and the pressure from the central government in the hands of the PP made the last years of that government difficult, since even though it was the majority (it reached 36 seats) did not have an absolute majority (38 seats) in Parliament. Thus, the 2002 budgets could not be approved until January 23 of that same year and only thanks to the abstention of Batasuna (which had adopted the name of Sozialista Abertzaleak in the Chamber of Vitoria). Even so, the budget items were voted on one by one and the budgets of more than half of the departments were rejected, which meant that those of the previous year were extended. The following year's budgets were saved from the extension due to the delay of the popular leader, Jaime Mayor Oreja, in reaching the vote. For 2004, the budgets were extended again, when all the opposition voted against, while for 2005, a mistake by a socialist parliamentarian finally allowed the budgets to be approved.
New Political Statute for the Community of the Basque Country (Ibarretxe Plan)
In compliance with its electoral program, the Basque Government proposed a reform of the autonomy statute of the Basque Country, with the name of the Political Statute of the Community of Euskadi, better known by the name of its promoter: Plan Ibarretxe.
The Ibarretxe Plan, with a pro-sovereignty proposal based on "free association" between the Basque Country and Spain, shared sovereignty and the right to self-determination, was presented as a third way between the so-called constitutionalist positions of the PP and the PSE -EE (PSOE) and the independence movement of EH and ETA. The proposal was defined as a "proposal for a political pact that materializes in a new relationship model with the Spanish State, based on free association and compatible with the development possibilities of a composite, plurinational and asymmetric state", which overflowed the constitutional framework as it existed at that time, by proposing the creation of a new legal framework in which practically all of the powers would be in the hands of the institutions of the Basque Country, leaving the Spanish State merely residual functions. The main Spanish political forces considered that the plan violated both the procedures and the contents of the framework of the Spanish Constitution. In order to enter into force, the proposal, being a reform of an autonomy statute, had to be approved by an absolute majority in the Basque Parliament and subsequently be admitted for processing in the Spanish Congress of Deputies, to then be processed in the own Congress and in the Senate by organic law. Ibarretxe also declared that, in the event that the proposal were paralyzed in the Spanish Cortes, he would call a referendum in the Basque Country so that the Basques could decide their future.
In response, on November 28, 2003, the government of José María Aznar approved adding to the Penal Code an article for which it was considered a crime punishable by between three to five years in prison and between six to ten years of absolute disqualification for a public office to call elections or referendums without the authorization of the Cortes. The reform was processed quickly and approved as an amendment of the Popular Party to the Organic Law of Arbitration, with the only votes in favor of the PP. The rest of the parliamentary groups of the Congress of Deputies abstained. The reform entered into force on December 23.
The Ibarretxe Plan passed the first stage, being approved by an absolute majority (39 votes out of 75) in the Basque Parliament on December 30, 2004, with the votes in favor of the parties that made up the tripartite government (36 seats) and 3 of the 6 parliamentarians of Sozialista Abertzaleak (SA), the heirs of the outlawed Batasuna (the other three voted against, the seventh, Josu Urrutikoetxea, was on the run from justice). The favorable votes of SA, as well as its acceptance by Ibarretxe, were highly criticized, since the Lehendakari himself had previously stated that he would dispense with the votes of SA for the approval of the Plan.
Once the procedure was passed in the Basque Parliament, the proposal was sent to the Congress of Deputies to be admitted for processing, there facing opposition from both the new socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the Popular Party. Ibarretxe himself defended the proposal in Congress, without achieving that in the vote held on February 1, 2005, the proposal was widely defeated, by 313 votes against (PSOE, PP, Izquierda Unida, Coalición Canaria and Chunta Aragonesista), 29 in favor (PNV, EA, Nafarroa Bai, CiU, ERC and BNG) and 2 abstentions (IC-V).
The rejection of the Congress of Deputies led the lehendakari Ibarretxe to call elections for April 17, 2005, with the intention that it be a plebiscite vote in relation to the proposal.
8th Legislature
The change in the central government due to the electoral triumph of the PSOE on March 14, 2004 and the establishment of a more conciliatory policy by the new government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, allowed these elections to be carried out in a atmosphere less rarefied than the previous ones. On the other hand, despite the fact that Batasuna and the different electoral groups that it had tried to create were still outside the law, the Abertzale left was able to ensure that its voters had representation, by using the offer of the Communist Party of the Basque Country (PCTV-EHAK), a recently created party to which, despite the requests of the Popular Party, justice found no relationship with ETA or Batasuna at first; although it would end up making it illegal in 2008.
The forecasts of the nationalist coalition between PNV and Eusko Alkartasuna, formed around the figure of Ibarretxe, were to obtain results that would allow them to form a government with an absolute majority, considering the support of the parties with which they that the previous government had formed, but the result of the polls was adverse, since the coalition only obtained 29 seats (22 PNV and 7 EA) corresponding to 38.67% of the votes cast, while the left abertzale , represented by the PCTV-EHAK, obtained 9 seats (12.44%) and the PSE-EE (PSOE) 18 seats (22.68%). This result was interpreted as a rejection of the citizenship to the Lendakari policy and especially the so-called Ibarretxe Plan, although the rejection was explained differently by the different political actors. Some made the reading that the citizens rejected said plan for being "too nationalist", looking at the growth that the PSE-EE (PSOE) had obtained, while others affirmed that the Basque citizens wanted more than said plan when obtaining the left abertzale, represented by the Communist Party of the Basque Lands (EHAK), excellent results after a pre-electoral period and a very complicated electoral campaign and the entry of Aralar into Parliament. All of this resulted in the relationship of forces in the Basque Parliament not being significantly altered (the seats that the nationalist coalition lost were those that were won by PCTV-EHAK and Aralar, with positions, in principle, more radical and pro-independence).
Ibarretxe was invested Lendakari on June 23, 2005, with 32 votes from the parties with which he would renew the tripartite (PNV, EA and EB) and 2 from the Communist Party of the Basque Country. The new government was constituted with the forces that had maintained the previous one (32 seats) and sought the support of the PSE-EE (PSOE) and the new formation in the chamber, Aralar, which had obtained a seat.
The VII Legislature has been marked, however, by the negotiation process between the Spanish Government and ETA to achieve an end to the violence and the dissolution of the terrorist organization. The PNV has adopted a discreet profile of support for the Spanish government, in which the leadership has fallen mainly on the president of Euzkadi Buru Batzar, Josu Jon Imaz and not on the Lendakari Ibarretxe.
Following the declaration of a truce by ETA, Juan José Ibarretxe called for the repeal of the Law on Parties, while holding a conference with all the Basque parties (including the outlawed Batasuna, with whose representatives Arnaldo Otegi, Juan José Petrikorena and Pernando Barrena met on April 19 at the Ajuria Enea Palace, seat of the Basque Government). For this reason, the Ermua Forum filed a complaint and the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country accused it of an alleged crime of disobedience when meeting with the outlawed Batasuna.
On January 31, 2007, he was called by the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country (TSJPV) to testify in the case of the interview with the Batasuna spokesman, Arnaldo Otegi, held on April 19, 2006, just four years after the National Court made the training illegal. In October 2007, together with the general secretary of the Euskadi Socialist Party, Patxi López and the socialist leader Rodolfo Ares, an oral trial was opened by said court, against the opinion of the Public Prosecutor, accused of a crime of disobedience under of those established in article 556 of the Criminal Code, having met on April 19, 2006 and January 22, 2007, during the ETA truce, with the illegal organization Batasuna. The case was finally archived on January 11, 2009, applying the "Botín doctrine", as there is no accusation either by the Public Prosecutor or by any private accusation.
The consultation of October 2008
In September 2007 Ibarretxe announced what he called the new "road map" in which he proposed:
- To reach an agreement with the Government of Spain before June 2008 on the future of Euskadi that was the "respect to the will of Basque society".
- Adopt such an agreement in the Basque Parliament in June 2008.
- If the pact with the central Government was adopted, then a binding referendum would be convened on 25 October 2008. In the absence of such an agreement, I would request the vote of the Basque Parliament to conduct a non-binding consultation on the same date.
If the Basque Chamber rejected this project, early elections would be called at the end of 2008.
The talks between the Lendakari and the socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero did not reach any agreement, so on June 27, 2008, the Basque Parliament voted in favor of carrying out a bill to consult the citizens Basque (34 votes in favor, one from PCTV; 33 against; and seven abstentions)
The project became a Law and the text of the two questions to be asked to the public was established on a non-binding basis.
The Spanish Executive filed an appeal before the Constitutional Court alleging that said consultation did not have the authorization of the Government to carry it out, which is legally necessary to carry out a referendum.
On September 11, 2008, the Constitutional Court unanimously declared the law promoted by the Lendakari and approved by the Basque Parliament on popular consultations unconstitutional, for violating article 149 of the fundamental law by invading state powers.
On October 25, 2008, the anniversary of the referendum approval of the "Gernika Statute" and on the day the referendum was scheduled to be held, the PNV, EA, IU and Aralar parties symbolically held an act of union between Guernica and Vitoria in which numerous affiliates formed a phrase in the towns between the two places with the text "Euskal Herria Bai, Bakea Bai, Erabakia Bai" (translated as "Yes to Euskal Herria. Yes to Peace. Yes to decide."), after which representatives of the four parties issued a statement in Basque, French, English and Spanish.
Elections to the Basque Parliament of 2009
During the celebration of the Alderdi Eguna on September 28, 2008, the president of the PNV, Iñigo Urkullu, announced that the highest internal body of the PNV (EBB) proposed Juan José Ibarretxe as a candidate in the internal electoral process that would be held on party for the elections to the Basque parliament to be held in 2009, to which other candidates could concur. other candidates that the militancy could propose).
In the 2009 Basque Parliament elections, the PNV, with Juan José Ibarretxe again as Lendakari candidate, obtained a total of 30 deputies, with close to 400,000 votes (38.56%). Despite being The party with the most votes and the largest number of seats, the Socialist Party of Euskadi, which reached the lehendakaritza, by achieving the support of the Popular Party and Unión Progreso y Democracia, which gave the candidate Patxi López the absolute majority necessary to access the presidency of the Basque Government. The impossibility of the left abertzale to attend the elections, given its illegalization; along with the growth of the PSE, it played a determining role in the possibility of the formation of this government.
He announced his withdrawal from political activity on May 5, 2009, during the debate on the investiture of Patxi López as Lehendakari.
Character
After suffering from an illness, he took to following a rigorous diet, as a result of which he is quite thin. He practices sports regularly and cycling is his favorite. He affirms that when he rides a bicycle, he meditates on the issues that he has pending. In fact, when he was mayor of his hometown, he presided over the Llodian Cycling Society. He is also fond of athletics and the mountains. Ibarretxe grew up speaking only Spanish, but when he was nominated as a candidate for lehendakari he dedicated a great effort to perfecting his Basque, the language he currently speaks. He declares himself a non-practicing Catholic.
Ibarretxe presents himself in his campaign biography as a tenacious negotiator (he himself admits that negotiating can become a "bog") and tireless worker (one of his favorite phrases is "let's go to work, what are we going to do? at night"), virtues that he displayed in the negotiation of the renewal of the Basque Economic Agreement in 1997, and that allowed him to be his party's candidate for lehendakari. It is also stated that he appears shy and reserved, though affable and always attentive, rarely opening up.
However, the way in which he personally handled the Ibarretxe Plan process has led to criticism; he is reproached for having a voluntarist speech, presented as firm and also stubborn and rigid.
In the presentation of the book Ibarretxe (2002), the journalist Javier Ortiz describes Ibarretxe as someone quite detached from power, considerate of his peers, extremely hard-working, simple and honest. Regarding his political ideas, Ortiz affirms that Ibarretxe belongs to a category of nationalists who, unlike messianic nationalists, cares about his people as a concrete and truly existing entity.
Criticism
Media opposed to Basque nationalism have accused Ibarretxe of being "the true motor of the political, judicial and personal pulse against legality in Spain". Foreign media such as The Economist have identified Ibarretxe as the leader after the sovereignist turn of the PNV.
The criticism by these media contrasts with the high evaluation of Juan José Ibarretxe by Basque citizens, usually obtaining high evaluations in the periodic surveys of the Autonomous Political Observatory of the University of the Basque Country within the Basque Country.
Biographies
Apart from a multitude of books on the Ibarretxe Plan, the only book that biography Juan José Ibarretxe is Ibarretxe (La Esfera de los Libros, Madrid, 2002, ISBN 978-84-9734- 022-9), written by the late Javier Ortiz, a Basque journalist who was the first deputy director of the edition of El Mundo in the Basque Country and whose last assignment was to be a columnist for the daily Público.
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