Socialist-led Spanish parliament votes to extend dictatorial powers

[Hannah Bell]

Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero’s Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) government has extended to January 15 the “state of alert” imposed upon 2,200 air traffic controllers on December 4—placing them under military control. The move confirms that the attack on the controllers is an attack on the democratic rights of the entire working class.

The controllers stopped working on health and safety grounds, insisting they had completed their annual quota of hours. They were also protesting against the proposed partial privatisation of the Spanish airport authority, AENA.

The state of alert is the first time it has been used since the death of the fascist dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975. It was first declared on December 4, following Zapatero’s calling of an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers. Royal Decree 1673/2010 placed controllers under military discipline, forcing them to work at gunpoint and under threat of imprisonment. Since then 400 have faced disciplinary procedures or prosecution, which could result in sentences of up to eight years in jail.

El Mundo reported that further extensions of the “state alert” can be expected, the purpose of which is to create “the period considered necessary to prepare the first group of military controllers to stand in for the civilian professionals who have been fired, severely sanctioned or facing criminal prosecution.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/spai-d20.shtml

[Rex]

1. Somewhere down in Hell, Reagan is laughing.

[Starry Messenger]

2. recommend.

[blindpig]

3. Some 'socialists'....

Sure that acronym ain't POS?

This illustrates the fate of those bourgeois socialist who play the parliamentary game, they are inevitably assimilated, like their democratic socialist fore-bearers in 1914.

[Gaedel]

4. Under socialism

Workers go on strike against the "people" and are thus "anti-worker".

.