The Year Of Living Corruptly

This has been the year of the corrupt. Topped and tailed by cases that at the start of the year ensnared prominent members of one political party (the Unió Mallorquina) and at its end with the "Caso Puertos", 2010 has been one long and sorry tale of the enduring rotten state of Mallorcan public life.

So what's new, you might ask. The new year same as the old year. In her Christmas message in 2009, the president of the Council of Mallorca, Francina Armengol, had called for commitment to "ethical civic behaviour", referring to the "repeated occurrence of corruption". In this year's message, while praising the efforts of those pursuing the corrupt, she said that there needed to be a change of direction in politics to one of transparency that is far removed from corruption.

If Sra. Armengol is still in office this time next year, she will probably be revisiting her theme. If not her, then her successor. Despite the diligent probes by prosecutors, judges and police, the cases of corruption and allegations of corruption keep coming to the surface with the regularity with which malodour filters out of a sewer cover.

Even where public figures are beyond reproach, so prevalent, so almost institutionalised has corruption been that you cannot be certain as to what you're seeing. Mallorcan politics is like the doping cheats in athletics or cycling or Pakistani bowlers deliberately overstepping the crease. You just can't be sure.

The level of corruption in Mallorca is, in one respect, surprising. The degree of decentralisation in local government conforms with the principle of subsidiarity whereby organisation is passed down to ever smaller authorities. In theory, subsidiarity should be an obstacle to corruption because its manifestation is easier to detect rather than in monolithic centralised organisations. Perhaps this subsidarity could now be said to be working in that more and more cases are coming to light. But it doesn't stop it happening in the first place.

Less surprising as a cause of corruption is the sheer size of the local public sector and the plethora of authorities which are both directly governmental (town halls, Council of Mallorca, regional government) and quasi-governmental, such as the ports authority, the subject of the "Caso Puertos". The larger the public sector, the more fertile the terrain in which corruption can take root.

Yet this doesn't always follow. Scandinavian countries, for example, have large public sectors but a virtual absence of corruption. Mallorca's corruption stems in part from its system of government but more importantly from a societal ethic that transmits itself into government - it is one of tribalism and nepotism.

The newspaper "El Mundo" recently carried an article in which it quoted the views of Juan Luis Calbarro, the spokesperson in the Balearics for the Unión Progreso y Democracia, a national party that was formed three years ago. What he has to say makes for difficult but not revelatory reading. "The Balearics have the highest number of people who are corrupt or allegedly corrupt per square metre in Spain." He then reeled off a list of cases, all of them ongoing, and concluded by saying that all the main executive and legislative bodies in the islands are implicated along with various individuals - "businesspeople who are friends of certain politicians, businesspeople who assemble companies in order to receive adjudications decided by their political friends, as well as the wives, husbands, cousins and nephews of politicians".

His is a damning indictment of the nepotism and cronyism that are the root cause of Mallorca's corruption, and it is one that may well afflict even those who enter politics with honourable intentions. To what extent does a societal ethic of granting favours act as a form of pressure on politicians to engage in dishonourable practices? As Gabriel Garcías, a professor of law at the Universitat de les Illes Balears, has said: "so long as there is no ethical or moral transformation in society, the law will solve nothing." Which is a depressing view of how, despite the huge publicity given to cases, legal measures may not eradicate corruption. The line from Monty Python's "Church Police" sketch isn't far from the truth: "it's a fair cop, but society is to blame".

And so you wonder if, at the end of 2011, we will be saying much the same thing as we are now and whether the president of the Council of Mallorca, whoever it might be, will be relaying the same message. You wouldn't bet against it.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.