In democracy one of the most common vices is incoherence. When a politician says or does two obviously contradictory things this politician is being incoherent. This is what Mariano Rajoy, Spanish Prime Minister, has just done in his speech to the UN General Assembly in New York when defending the self-determination of Western Sahara, while he is repeatedly denying this same right to the people of Catalonia.
Coherence would be to either deny or defend this right in both cases. The right of self-determination is recognised in the UN Charter. It is not a conditional right, as some argue, only acceptable in processes of decolonisation, but a political right of all peoples in the world, whatever the conditions of their existence might be - as the case of the independence of Norway from Sweden in 1905, Slovenia and Croatia from Yugoslavia and Baltic countries from the USSR in 1990s or Slovakia in 1992 prove. If one accepts this recognition, one has to support it abroad and at home. If one does not honestly accept this recognition, one can just use it for political gain, depending on the context and, if so it's needed, contradictorily.
Incoherence is a vice because it is dishonest. It is the product of an insincere and unprincipled association with an idea - normally a widely respected principle - for personal profit. As in Spain, it seems that this vice enjoys wide acceptance and toleration by the political elites and the populations of many democratic countries. This fact makes more pressing the need to denounce it and fight it at home and abroad, in domestic politics and, perhaps even more insistenly, in international relations.
It is only by this dishonesty that the Spanish government can try to stop the very coherent, democratic and peaceful process of independence of Catalonia. For this process is not only the way of a community of people to survive as such, as a historic, cultural, political and socio-economic community. It is also the way this community is expressing its ethos, with honesty, and, so coherence, at its core. It is the Catalan Way.
On this way, millions of European people have started a journey towards emancipation. Self-determination is a principle, not a compromise. It is not a political tool one uses according to the situation at hand, but a right of any community to be able to exist. Its defence is coherent. Its attack is coherent. Both things simultaneously is not.
The same way one chooses between coherence or incoherence, the governments of other countries have now just two options. Either to support Rajoy's attempts to derail democracy using dishonest means or support all these people on their way, wishing them safe travels and that they reach their destination, whichever this might be, provided they travel in peace and truthfulness. This will be the coherent response of a responsible international community.
Alejandro Ribó
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