The Source Of The Problem: Jaume Font and the PP

Jaume Font. James the Source. The source of much discontent within the local Partido Popular; discontent that will rumble on despite Font's departure from the party.

Jaume has not, he says, been happy with the party for some years. He became less happy last summer when he found his route to the presidency of the Council of Mallorca blocked by the party's leader, José Ramón Bauzá. Joe Ray has achieved something astonishing. What should have brought him plaudits, not nominating anyone for the forthcoming elections implicated in any scandal, has backfired.

Font was the most prominent member of the party to be so denied nomination. The accusations against him, which revolved around the so-called "caso plan territorial de Mallorca", were archived along with the whole case in November. The perceived injustices against individuals whose innocence was being questioned were just the background to the greater division that Bauzá had successfully managed to create. The left of the party has been alienated by his anti-Catalanism, his equivocal attitude towards regional autonomy and by perceptions that the real control is in the hands of the party nationally and via the puppet-mastery figure of Carlos Grytpype-Thynne, Sr. Delgado, Mr. Thin, the mayor of Calvia.

Bat duly taken home, the fountain of another party is to gush, with Font its spring. He has rejected the idea of his joining the Unió Mallorquina, unlike another ex-PP member, Miguel Munar, who has already risen to a position of high command in a party stripped of much of its leadership through scandal. Instead, there will be a party with a power base in his home town of Sa Pobla, to which, in an act of indignant snubbing, Joe Ray was not invited to the end-of-summer celebrations in September.

The support of the "poblers" alone would not get Font very far, which is why he appears to believe that a grander party, let's call it the Font Front (in fact the Lliga Regionalista Balear), should be formed. This could embrace the UM and presumably others disenchanted with the unpopular head of the "populares", Joe Ray. These might include the PP spokesperson in the local parliament, the boy on the burning and under-demolition-threat bridge of Porto Cristo, populist baldy Antoni Pastor, the mayor of Manacor. Another one of the great disaffected, Guillem Ginard, the former mayor of Campos who fell out with his UM buddies and formed his own party, +Acció, is also said to be in the frame for the Font Front.

There isn't a terrific amount of clear blue Med between the UM and the left of the PP. In many respects, they are very similar. The UM's USPs of Catalan and autonomy appear to be those also of the anti-Bauzá PP. Only a fervent attitude towards independence on behalf of the UM might be said to distinguish the two.

The danger for Font, however, is that a coalition with the UM could easily be portrayed as the union of the discredited. Though the case against him has been archived, i.e. to all intents and purposes dropped, and though the new-look UM has tried to distance itself from the corruption cases, Font was environment minister in the Jaume Matas government. Bauzá has not only sought to block nominations of those implicated in scandal, he has also sought to draw a line under the Matas regime and its corruption allegations. Font's going is not something that Bauzá will be unhappy about.

If he hadn't managed to put his foot in it so often, as with his self-confessed "mental lapse" regarding Catalan, Joe Ray's cleaning up of the PP would by now, you would have thought, have placed him in a position of far greater strength and have also afforded him greater popularity. But he has underestimated the "Mallorcan-ness" of much of his local party, thus bringing about the division that he now faces. In November he had to meet with PP mayors from across the island, alarmed by the friction, with Font and Pastor firmly lined up against Bauzá.

Though there may be a possibility that others will jump ship from the PP, it would be a huge risk to any politician with his or her eye on the main chance of governmental power. There are three months until the elections, which is not long to put into place an effective party machine. However, it is being said that there are some powerful businesspeople willing to support it.

The PP should walk the coming elections, but even were it to win, how long would it take for the divisions to re-surface? They are ones largely of Bauzá's making. His apparently honourable intentions to present a "clean" PP have been undone by what one commentator has described as the "breaking of the bonds between the PP and Mallorca". There are unhappy campers on the party's left and a strident right-ist agenda would only make them unhappier. Just like Jaume Font.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.