A League Of Their Own: Mallorca's centre politics

History is littered with the dead of failed new political parties. The gang of four of the Social Democrats didn't succumb to "anthrax" but they might as well have followed the title of this track by the post-punk Gang Of Four so little did they really achieve, other than paving the way for Liberals to become Democrats and to ultimately eat from the same table as the Conservatives.

Two-party politics tends to be the norm. In Mallorca it is no different. Of the two, PSOE is by far the older, reflecting its good and once genuine socialist worker roots. The PP is a phenomenon of the post-Franco era but it had a stuttering start in its original "alliance" guise as the electorate on the terraces were screaming "are you Franco in disguise?".

In the Mallorcan centre, kind of, was the old Unió Mallorquina before it was finally consumed by its rotten-to-the-core culture of corruption and consigned to the bin of political history. Except it didn't disappear completely. It acquired a new name, the Convergència. The electorate weren't really fooled and so at the last elections it was given a sound kicking. At the same time as the UM had been undergoing its transmogrification, another political kid arrived on the block - La Lliga Regionalista. It sprang from a source known as Jaume Font (and if you don't get the gag, let me tell you that font means both spring and source). He had fallen out big time with the now president of the Balearics, José Ramón Bauzá, and so went off and formed his own party. It fared equally as poorly as the Convergència at the elections.

To the uninitiated, it was hard to tell the two parties apart. They both claimed the centre ground and they were both in favour of differing degrees of regional self-government. There wasn't ever room for both and now, almost eighteen months after having failed to set the political world alight at the elections, they've decided to merge. The Convergència will converge with La Lliga in forming a league of their own.

On the face of it, the merger makes perfectly good sense, in that Mallorcan politics can ever be described as conforming to notions of good sense. In terms of the current political landscape, it has a lot going for it. The PP, apart from taking everyone's jobs and money away, has been doing a thoroughly decent job in attempting to appear as though they have no interest in regional autonomy or self-government in the Balearics. PSOE, ripped to shreds at the last election, has managed to keep up appearances of being totally useless. There is a fair old amount of political ground, therefore, for a likely lad party to gobble up, assuming anyone takes any notice and also assuming they don't all have lovers' tiffs more or less as soon as they have jumped into bed.

In this regard, things aren't too promising. Pollensa is one of the few towns where both parties have some sort of presence, so much so that La Lliga is part of the ruling coalition and the Convergència has a couple of councillors. Unfortunately, they can't stand each other for reasons that would take an entire article to explain and at the end of which you would still be probably none the wiser. As a consequence, there threatens to be a mini-Moors and Christians re-enactment with political blood spilt all over the nice new floors of the town hall building.

Local spats aside, there should in theory be some optimism for this new party. But then there are the skeletons that will continue to rattle. Font was once cited in a corruption case. It was one reason why he left the PP because Bauzá wouldn't sanction candidacies from anyone who was on a charge. The fact that the charge was archived (i.e. was not proven and was filed) probably won't prevent the dirty-tricks brigade from reminding everyone of the charge. Then there is the Convergència, a UM rose by any other name, some would argue. And all the time that Munar, Nadal and others from the old UM hierarchy are keeping the local beaks in gainful employ the misdemeanours of the past will hound it.

But lurking in the background, as he will be for the foreseeable future, is Manacor's mayor Antoni Pastor. He says he is giving no consideration to joining the new party. Exiled by the PP and so stateless in party terms, he would give the new party a massive boost, but then he knows this. He would probably want to be number one, but that would be difficult. My guess is that he still anticipates being welcomed back into the PP fold as its saviour and were he to be, he would shift the PP towards the centre and back to a position that is more favourable towards regional autonomy. At a stroke, the new party would be doomed.


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