Should convicted terrorist murderers be allowed to become elected politicians in Spain?

Bildu included 7 murderers and 37 other terrorists in its local election lists.

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Outrage ensued last week after the COVITE terror victims association in the Basque Country published a statement warning Spaniards that the radical left Basque separatist party Bildu (currently five MPs in the national parliament in Madrid) had included 44 former ETA terrorists, including seven murderers, in its electoral lists for this month’s local elections.

“No dignified democracy, no country under the rule of law, aware of the significance of its terror victims, would allow terrorists to walk through a revolving door into politics. That these people can reach public office, as if they had not posed a very serious threat to democracy in the past, is worrying and disappointing", said their chairwoman, Consuelo Ordóñez.

The right has slammed Sánchez and the Socialist Party with the issue all week after the election campaign began last Thursday night and this morning, news broke that the seven murderers, at least, had promised not take up their seats on local councils if elected on May 28. The other 37 convicted terrorists apparently still intend to do so, though, and if the renunciation is just a pre-electoral pinky-promise statement from a bunch of convicted murderers, would they have large ethical or moral problems with unrenouncing on the day after the elections and taking up their seats after all?

Bildu leader Arnaldo Otegui, himself a convicted terrorist kidnapper, today said of the seven murderers, announcing that they would renounce their seats if elected, that "Our almost 4,500 male and female candidates subscribe to EH Bildu’s commitment to exclusively peaceful, democratic paths". So after including the seven terrorist murderers and 37 other assorted terrrorists in their electoral lists, another former terrorist promises that his party is dedicated to peace and democracy.

Should former terrorists, murderers, kidnappers and all the rest, be allowed to take part in democratic politics at all, even after they leave jail? Does one ever really become a former terrorist or a former murderer, to then take advantage of the tribal name recognition to slide into a comfy spot in local politics somewhere after a mid-life career change?

The United Kingdom notably saw the case of Martin McGuinness, the former IRA member who later became the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and even had his photo taken shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth. At the other extreme, we have the 30 men still held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by the United States, who haven’t even gone to trial yet after 20 years of arbitrary detention.

Clearly Spanish law and the Constitution as they stand allow the 44 ETA terrorists to run for office in the electoral lists after completing their sentences and voting rights are a fundamental constitutional issue, so if the outrage really goes beyond election week headlines, the politicians would need to get together across the board to reform both criminal law and the Constitution to withdraw the right to stand for public office from those people convicted of the most serious crimes: terrorism and murder.

As we saw during the years of Puigdemont’s Catalan separatism, such deep constitutional reform, while possible in theory, in practice would need an enormous amount of cross-party support in parliament that currently just does not exist: a two-thirds vote in both houses, followed by the dissolution of parliament, followed by a general election, followed by a new two-thirds vote, again in both houses, followed by a national referendum.

Would the 35 million Spaniards, in the Basque Country and the rest of the country, who do not vote for Bildu (276,519 votes in 2019) support the idea of convicted terrorists and murderers never being allowed to run for public office as politicians? Or does allowing them to participate in public life in this way, despite the damage it must cause to the relatives of their victims, an inherent part of Spanish democracy and the country’s way of interpreting the philosophy of law?

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