Saturday, November 27, 2004

Spanish dirty politics

"Spanish dirty politics". This is the subtitle of my log. Something that I thought it could happen but I hoped it wouldn't.
Unfortunately, in the 21st century there are still some so-called democratic countries that think they can use everything they want in order to accomplish their objectives.
This is what happened yesterday in the annual congress of the FIRS in Fresno (California).
The scenes lived in the Assembly made clear that there was a plot so that Catalunya wasn't recognised as a full member of the FIRS.
It was a monumental scandal. A shameful end for an authentic collective shame, that made the former president of the FIRS, Oliveras de la Riva, to publicly apologise in behave of the world of roller sports.

It all started when the General Secretary of the FIRS, Roberto Maroto, proposed to vote the ratification of the decision taken by the Executive Committee of invalidating the provisional admission of Catalonia.
Ignacio González, lawyer of the Spanish, stormed off his seat shouting and asking for that voting not to take place.
From that moment the chaos took over the meeting.
First the possibility of secret voting was prevented (despite the fact that more than two federations requested so), later it was said that the voting was to say no to the provisional admission of Catalonia, which really confused most of the FIRS, and finally the Catalan federation was not allowed to take the work and defense their arguments.
Jean Louis Dupont, lawyer of the Catalan federation, approached the microphone but he was prevented to speak by the Italian Aracy and the Spanish lawyer Gozalez.
In this scandalous climate and while some South American members requested explanations, the Secretary General started up the voting, that resulted in 114 yes (not to Catalunya), 8 favorable votes and 2 abstentions. The "no" to Catalonia arrived after 12 minutes of dialectic battle that at some moments gave the impression that could end up in a fight, with the Spaniards trying to rule the meeting .
It was outrageous to see an Italian MP, Sabatino Aracu, shouting at the Catalan lawyer and phisically blocking him from expressing his legal opinion.
It was the culmination of the authentic holdup that has been both days lived in Fresno and the clear demonstration that there have been many political pressures to prevent the admission of Catalunya was accepted.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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