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| Europe |
| Spanish opposition leader excoriates Zapatero and Socialists |
| 2004-10-02 |
| Madrid, Oct 1 (EFE).- In a scathing attack, a leader of Spain's main opposition party on Friday accused the five-month-old Socialist government of trying "to lynch" the previous administration's main figures and of fomenting the sort of animosity that led to the 1936-39 Civil War. Angel Acebes, deputy secretary general of the opposition Popular Party, or PP, on Friday accused Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of planning revenge and evoking "memories of the scenario that culminated seventy years ago in civil war." Addressing participants in the national congress of Spanish Conservatives, Acebes blasted the "weakness and radicalism" of Zapatero's Socialist government and warned that the PP will not tolerate that "strategy of democratic degeneration." "Neither Adolfo Suarez, nor (Leopoldo) Calvo Sotelo, nor (Felipe) Gonzalez (three former Spanish prime ministers) were subjected to the lynching that Zapatero has now organized" against the 1996-2004 administration of Jose Maria Aznar, Acebes said. In addition to "bringing back memories of that civil discord," Acebes said the Zapatero administration is also characterized by efforts to dominate the judiciary and harass the Roman Catholic Church. The severity of Acebes' statements was contrasted by the self-criticism expressed by Madrid Mayor Alberto Ruiz Gallardon at his inaugural speech in the Conservative forum. The mayor asked the party's leaders and members to do an "exercise in reality" and acknowledge that "we must have done something wrong." The mayor attributed the PP's electoral defeat on March 14 to "misunderstandings generated in the last few years" between the PP and Spanish society, which "were accompanied by dramatic and absolutely singular circumstances," in reference to the March 11 terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists that killed 192 people in Madrid. |
| Posted by:Mark Espinola |