Outgoing Spanish president and Partido Popular (PP) leader José María Aznar has tarnished his own reputation badly in his last weeks in office by his politically-motivated deception last week about lthe 11-M attack in Madrid.
The PP is the successor party to Franco's fascist party, and Aznar is widely given credit for purging the party of its leftover antidemocratic tendencies and making it a genuinely conservative party. And it is widely so regarded, although Zapatero's PSOE (social democrats) were known to refer to it as "authoritarian" in the recent election. Spain Campaigned to Pin Blame on ETA Washington Post 03/17/04:
Beginning immediately after the blasts, Aznar and other officials telephoned journalists, stressing ETA's responsibility and dismissing speculation that Islamic extremists might be involved. Spanish diplomats pushed a hastily drafted resolution blaming ETA through the U.N. Security Council. At an afternoon news conference, when a reporter suggested the possibility of an al Qaeda connection, the interior minister, Angel Acebes, angrily denounced it as "a miserable attempt to disrupt information and confuse people." ...
Within days, that assertion was in tatters, and with it the reputation and fortunes of the ruling party. Suspicion that the government manipulated information -- blaming ETA in order to divert any possible link between the bombings and Aznar's unpopular support for the war in Iraq -- helped fuel the upset victory of the Socialist Workers' Party in Sunday's elections. By then, Islamic extremists linked to al Qaeda had become the focus of the investigation.
German officials are letting it be known that they are very unhappy about being misled themselves about ETA involvement. (BKA wurde von Spanien in die Irre geführt Der Spiegel Online 03/16/04) It wasn't until Saturday morning, after the PP's story was coming publicly unraveled, that German officials concluded that Islamic extremists were more likely suspects.
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