Can Bildu be made illegal for bringing people convicted of ETA on their lists? This says the law

A total of 44 ETA terrorists will march on the electoral lists of EH Bildu for the next regional, municipal and regional elections of 28-M in the Vaco Country and Navarra. Seven of them were convicted of murder.. Both Vox and the group of victims of ETA, Dignity and Justice, demand the banning of the Basque party. The Prosecutor's Office of the National Court is studying whether to investigate the case.

Santiago Abascal's party defends that it is a “moral duty” and a “commitment in defense of the thousands of victims of ETA, whom EH Bildu despises.” The legalization of the party led by Arnaldo Otegi, according to Vox, would be an “unforgivable affront not only to the direct victims, murdered or relatives, but to all Spaniards, indirect victims of ETA's criminal trajectory.”

Now, and leaving Bildu's morality aside when it comes to choosing his candidates, he questions whether it is possible to outlaw the party for having almost fifty people linked to ETA's entourage on its lists.

[Otegi's 'apologies' are not enough for the victims of ETA: “Let the ongi etorri stop now”]

Chapter II of Organic Law 5/1985, of June 19, on the General Electoral Regime, stipulates that all those convicted “for crimes of rebellion, terrorism, against the Public Administration or against State Institutions shall be ineligible when the same has established the penalty of disqualification for the exercise of the right to passive suffrage or that of absolute or special disqualification or suspension for employment or public office under the terms provided in criminal law.

These 44 convicts do not have their right to passive suffrage disabled, so the law allows them to form the ranks of Bildu.

In this sense, the same law establishes in chapter VI that, in any case, “political parties, federations or coalitions of parties, and groups of voters may not present candidacies that, in fact, come to continue or succeed the activity of a political party judicially declared illegal and dissolved, or suspended”. It also points out that it would take into account if one of the purposes of the party would consist of “supporting violence or terrorism” and that they allow “considering said continuity or succession”.

According to this law, Bildu relies on the total dissolution of ETA in 2018 to present the 44 convicted of the terrorist group on its lists.

Legal vacuum for the illegalization of EH Bildu

However, there is a legal vacuum in the Spanish jurisdiction that would make it possible to request the illegalization of the abertzale formation . Organic Law 6/2002, of June 27, on Political Parties.

Chapter II of the regulations establishes that a party may be declared illegal when it includes “in its governing bodies or on its electoral lists people convicted of terrorist crimes who have not publicly rejected the terrorist aims and means, or maintain a large number affiliated with organizations or entities linked to a terrorist or violent group, unless they have adopted disciplinary measures against them leading to their expulsion”.

The following section of the Law on Parties states that it can also be dissolved if the people who “compose, govern, represent or administer” a party, “support violence or terrorism” and if “continuity or succession is possible in contrast to the data and documents in the process in which the banning and dissolution was decreed”.

One of the legs by which Bildu's electoral list is sustained is its protection in the dissolution of ETA as a justification for the legality of the party. This legal loophole can conclude in the legitimization or not of the Basque coalition.

Who can declare a political party illegal?

The Party Law states that the competent sphere to declare a party illegal and its consequent dissolution is the Supreme Court, the Government and the Public Prosecutor's Office.

The Congress of Deputies or the Senate may urge the Government to request it. However, the relationship between PSOE and EH Bildu makes the banning of the Basque left improbable.

What do PP and PSOE say about it?

The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has demanded this Friday in an act in Toledo “to do something” with the Bildu list. “Are we really not going to do anything, that we are going to look the other way, after what we have suffered? This is not normal, let's report it!”. He has also challenged the PSOE candidates to demand that Pedro Sánchez break with Bildu.

On the other hand, the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, showed her “maximum respect” to EH Bildu on May 10 and assured that “it is a democratic party that chooses its lists”, after meeting the 44 former members of ETA.

Who are the seven convicted of Bildu's murder?

The nationalist coalition counts seven convicted of the terrorist group for blood crimes. One of them is Agustín Muiños Dias, alias Tinin, number 6 on the list for mayor of Legutiano (Álava). He was sentenced to 29 years in prison for murdering José Antonio Julián Bayano in 1983.

The list continues with Begoña Uzkudun Etxenagusia, number 3 on the list of the Régil City Council (Guipúzcoa). In 1989, she was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the murder of José Larrañaga Arenas, former councilor of the Azcoitia city council.

Another of the Bildu terrorists is Juan Ramón Rojo González, number 21 on the list for the City Council of Irún (Navarra). In 1996 he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murder of Francisco Gil Mendoza.

Lander Maruri Basagoiti, a substitute in the Ciérvena (Vizcaya) candidacy, was also sentenced in 2001 to 16 years in prison for being an accomplice in the murder of the civil guard José Manuel García Fernández. Now, Maruri Basagoiti is running as a candidate in the same city where the agent was murdered.

Thus, the next ETA convict for murder is Asier Uribarri Benito, Bildu's fourth extra to the Maruri-Jatabe City Council (Vizcaya).. He was sentenced in 2001 to 16 years in prison for being an accomplice in the murder of García Fernández along with Maruri Basagoiti.

[Interior puts an end to the dispersal of ETA prisoners: it has already brought the Basque Country closer to 100%]

The line of ETA members continues with Juan Carlos Arriaga Martínez, number 3 on the list for the Berrioplano City Council (Navarra). He was sentenced in 1989 to 29 years in prison for assassinating Army Commander Jesús Alcocer Jiménez.

The seventh and last, for the moment, accused of the murder of ETA, Antonio Torre Altonaga, alias Medius, second substitute on the list for the mayor of Munguía (Vizcaya), sentenced in 1981 to 20 years in prison for collaborating in the murder of Andrés Guerra Pereda and Alberto Negro Viguera.