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Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

theguardian.com

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Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#21

Post by kcorbitt »

argonaut wrote: post #12

I thought this analysis article was really thought-provoking and now I have uncertain and mixed feelings about the referendum: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/europe/independence... . Basically, when it comes to things like this there's a conflict between two international ideals: integrity of national borders and human rights . And there are some thought provoking ideas in the article. If you think about it…

In a divorce, you don't require that all parties agree that divorcing is the right decision. If a single party wants to dissolve the relationship, that is sufficient.

There's more nuance when we're talking about entire states, but I believe the same principle should apply. This particular vote was irregular enough to not really be legitimate, but the Spanish government should recognize that some sort of Catalan referendum has a right to take place.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#22

Post by charlesism »

coenhyde wrote: post #17
argonaut wrote: post #12

I thought this analysis article was really thought-provoking and now I have uncertain and mixed feelings about the referendum: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/europe/independence... . Basically, when it comes to things like this there's a conflict between two international ideals: integrity of national borders and human rights . And there are some thought provoking ideas in the article. If you think about it…

I don't think it's appropriate to ask the citizens of the rest of the country if they support the secession. To create a simple analogy lets say you have a group of five people. One is a captive and four are the captors. Is it appropriate to have a referendum with all five people to vote on if the captive is allow to go free? No the four captors are always going to vote no. The captive has to escape without the suppo…

The whole idea of a democracy is that the majority wins (which is why we need liberalism to offer protection for the minority). Every minority is a majority of itself.

This is one reason why trying to deal with secessionists in a democracy is so difficult (see also Canada, and Ireland).

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#23

Post by jlmorton »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #7

It's absurd that in a Western 'democracy' you'd have the national police out to suppress a referendum and attack peaceful voters. Good job Spain, you just legitimised the referendum and gave Catalonia a ton of international sympathy.

I wonder, what would happen in the United States if California decided it wanted to secede, the Congress passed a resolution opposing it, the President said it was illegal, and the Supreme Court concurred and ruled the vote itself illegal.

Would the US allow the vote to proceed?

It certainly is illegal for any US State to secede, and we fought one of the bloodiest wars in the history of the world over it.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#25

Post by Y7ZCQtNo39 »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #7

It's absurd that in a Western 'democracy' you'd have the national police out to suppress a referendum and attack peaceful voters. Good job Spain, you just legitimised the referendum and gave Catalonia a ton of international sympathy.

The optics (at the moment) seem to be the most important issue here. Whether or not the vote is legitimate is quite irrelevant in immediate aftermath. This is a government using physical force against its citizens for, of all things, voting -- a core democratic principle.

Democracy must be tolerant of peaceful protesting. An "illegal" vote (depending who's lens we are viewing this from), to me, is a form of peaceful protest. Candor, mutual respect, and peaceful organizing are some of a few tools democracies have to solve problems without devolving to unrest and violence. If we assume we highly value avoiding violence (and we should), governments need to tolerate the use of these tools, from time to time.

By banning the use of these more moderate options, the national government is essentially promoting dissenters to even less desirable options so they have at least some form of expression. I think we should be surprised the national government chose to use such force when it had far less invasive means for dealing with the consequences of this vote, e.g., courts.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#26

Post by Mikeb85 »

bjterry wrote: post #8
sgc wrote: post #5

Yeah ... if you are willing to take a boot to the face to vote, you probably want to change the status quo. But the boots to the face then validate the results and the rest will be history.

Game theoretically, the fact that the Spanish government was so dead set against the vote implies that they thought there was a significant probability that it would be over 50% regardless. It seems like if a government resorts to violence to stop separatism movements, that violence is prima facie evidence that the separatist sentiment potentially represents the majority of a region. I have actually been surprised by…

No western government believes in self-determination. They only believe in results that favour western hegemony. For example, Orange Revolution = good. Crimean referendum = bad. Arab Spring = good. Independent Kurdistan = bad. And so on.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#27

Post by Mikeb85 »

jmspring wrote: post #13
Mikeb85 wrote: post #7

It's absurd that in a Western 'democracy' you'd have the national police out to suppress a referendum and attack peaceful voters. Good job Spain, you just legitimised the referendum and gave Catalonia a ton of international sympathy.

Spain is a relatively "young" democracy by Western standards. It took Franco's death in 1975 for Spain to start the transition to a modern democracy. That said, the Basque region has been trying to separate for awhile. Catalonia wanting to do so just happens to be a bigger fish.

It's young, but given the fact it's a fairly integral part of the EU and NATO, you'd expect better from Spain.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#28

Post by farresito »

randiantech wrote: post #2

There are reports of people voting from two to 4 different schools. Wondering what methods authorities used to ensure there was no fraud on these referendum.

I voted. I can't talk about all the schools, but the ones I checked made sure (electronically) that you didn't vote twice, but of course there's a chance that some people did indeed vote more than once if for some reason they manually wrote down the name.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#29

Post by Retric »

kcorbitt wrote: post #24
nsnick wrote: post #16

This will end up as a shooting war.

...that's extremely unlikely. Independence doesn't have anywhere close to 90% support in reality, it's just that the pro-Spain faction didn't turn out to vote.

As far as I can tell, US independence had minority support (~40 - 45% of the white population) they however where willing to fight. With others either neutral or Loyalists.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#30

Post by twiss »

sgc wrote: post #5

Yeah ... if you are willing to take a boot to the face to vote, you probably want to change the status quo. But the boots to the face then validate the results and the rest will be history.

According to the article, 2.26 million Catalans voted out of 5.3 million registered voters, so the result is highly significant. Even if only 21% of the people who stayed at home would have voted yes (unlikely), "yes" would still have won.
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