People Talking Without Speaking

Following the demonstration on Saturday which demanded the right of choice in language matters, as opposed to the so-called "Catalan imposition", the regional government of socialist President Antich and his coalition supporters from the nationalists and the left has declared that there will be no change to the policy of the equally so-called "linguistic normalisation". Antich has added that he does not want language to be the reason for confrontation, while the nationalists feel that the demonstration represented a minority and the views of the conservative Partido Popular.

Hmm, well the rhetoric is all starting to sound as there could well be if not a reason then at least a ground swell of opposing views that could indeed lead to confrontation. One sincerely hopes not. Despite the unwillingness of the Palma police to issue numbers attending the Saturday demo, it would seem that there were more marching then than was the case three weeks prior when the pro-Catalan march was held. Perhaps both demos represented minorities. And there may well be some merit in that view. If one takes reasonably believable figures, no more than 30,000 people have turned up to the two demos put together. Hardly a mass movement either way.

One is left with the impression that this whole argument is one of minority interest. While most people on the island would have an opinion, one way or the other, one suspects that most people aren't really that bothered; certainly not bothered enough to go marching through the streets of Palma on a Saturday. There are better things to do - like going to the beach. So political and other groups have hijacked the language debate at a time when, in truth, there are rather more important matters to be concerned about. Not that language is unimportant, but it is an issue for more benign economic times and not times when emotion can overtake rationality. Underlying the Catalan case, one fears, is a certain nationalism, not of the generally sensible Unió Mallorquina one, but of a more radical nature. Poor economic circumstances feed all sorts of tendency, some more extreme than others.

It is against this background that the interview with the PP's Rosa Estaras in "The Bulletin" the other day takes on rather more significance. She pointed out that the PP did actually poll more votes than any other party at the last local elections, but because of the nature of the electoral system, the administration was made up of a socialist-led coalition. It is, as the editor of "The Bulletin" rightly pointed out, something of a lesson for British politicians who now favour a move to proportional representation. That is a whole debate that is not really for this blog, though God knows I could fill a whole month's worth of entries on the subject. But suffice to ask, had the PSOE won a thumping majority last time round and not been dependent upon coalition partners, would its administration now be so committed to the current language policy? Locally, it is less important an issue to the PSOE overall (and the PSOE is, of course, a national party) than it is to the likes of the UM. The theoretically greater democracy of PR gives rise to horse-trading through coalition governments. This is not altogether a bad thing if it results in greater checks and balances, but as much as there can be tyranny through the democracy as practised through the UK electoral system so there is also tyranny through the disproportionately strong voices of minor parties in coalitions. Moreover, PR can lead to a certain stasis in government. And that, when it comes to tackling the greater problems that exist in the Balearics, is perhaps the strongest argument against PR.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - 10cc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJMF59OC64Y. Today's title - silence.

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