WHAT you say in opposition is one thing; what you do in government is something else entirely. That kind of cynicism, not entirely unfamiliar closer to home, seems to be infecting Spain's conservative Partido Popular (PP), to the dismay of some of its most vocal supporters.
Earlier this month, Mr Jose Maria Aznar's PP cabinet performed a dramatic U-turn on a deeply divisive issue: it refused to release state papers which might shed light on crimes committed by the security forces.
By an unhappy coincidence, a general charged with kidnapping, torture and murder was released without bail on the same day. These were popular decisions with the PP's pro-military right wing but were deeply disturbing to those who had hoped the PP would clean up the murkier areas of Spanish public life.
Last Monday, the extent of the political damage became clear. An anti-terrorist platform of democratic parties, painstakingly reunified by the PP earlier in the summer, met in the Basque country only to come to a total impasse in an attempt to discuss the issue.
The president of the moderate Basque Nationalist Party, Mr Xabier Arzallus, warned that the very existence of the platform, a key element in the Government's anti-ETA strategy, depended on the PP's willingness to pursue counter-terrorists" who had operated outside the law.
Meanwhile, an opinion poll indicated that 47 per cent of Spaniards reject the PP decision, against 25 per cent who approve.
When the PP finally defeated socialist (PSOE) rivals last March it did so at least partly on a wave of revulsion against the numerous scandals in which the PSOE had embroiled itself during 13 years in power. The most damning of these was a murderous "dirty war against the Basque separatist group ETA.
Throughout 1995, evidence had piled up suggesting that senior figures in the PSOE, possibly including the prime minister, Mr Felipe Gonzalez, had sanctioned the GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacion), which killed 27 people, many of them unconnected to ETA, in the 1980s.
Some of the most compromising testimony came in the form of documents apparently stolen and copied from secret service files. The PSOE government stubbornly refused to release the originals to judges investigating the GAL, on the grounds that access to such files would undermine the security of the State.
In opposition, the PP took an aggressive, high-moral-ground stance. State secrecy should not be used to protect criminals, they argued.
In a typical speech, the PP's robust deputy leader, Mr Alvarez Cascos, had no doubts that these papers should be handed to the judiciary at once. "We must reject," he thundered, "appeals to national security which serve to hide from democratic control... documents which may be decisive in clarifying criminal conduct and which only threaten the private security of this government."
The new government, of which Mr Cascos is vice-president, used precisely the defence that national security was at stake to refuse to hand over the same papers to the same judges. Two ministers, including the Minister for Justice, openly opposed this. Mr Cascos is believed to have wanted a compromise, by which some papers would have been released and others remained classified.
