The Roots Of All Corruption

Here we go again. Some senior names in the Balearics Partido Popular have become embroiled in a scandal. Pity poor President Bauzá, as he had made a pledge to have a clean PP. Not all the names caught up in a new corruption investigation are of the past; there are names linked to the current PP administration, too.

But should we pity poor Bauzà or should we accept that he is a mere agent of a malaise that goes deep? It is not one of the Partido Popular in the Balearics or the rest of Spain. Not the PP alone. It is one of Spain's political party system.

The author Javier Cercas, in a recent English article for "El País", laid into the party system and into political parties for colonising everything and for being "nests of corruption" and "closed clubs that function in an undemocratic manner". Cercas was moderate, however, in his attack on the political parties; moderate by comparison with the Spain-based German journalist Stefanie Müller.

In September, an article by Müller caused an internet sensation. After I had read it, I replied to the person who had sent me a link to the article. All I said was "blimey". Müller's assault on the Spanish economic crisis went way beyond an analysis of deficiencies in the banking sector or with regional government. She laid the blame for Spain's problems at the door of the political system. "The reason for Spain's illness is a non-viable model of the state, the source of all nepotism and corruption imposed by an oligarchy of parties in collusion with financial and economic oligarchies."

Müller's article, it would seem, was assisted by a Spanish economics and politics writer called Roberto Centeno; Cristóbal Montoro, the current Spanish minister of finance, was formerly a student of his. Centeno is typically branded as being right-wing and ultra-conservative. Perhaps so, but with his help Müller launched an attack on the political system now echoed in some ways by Cercas, and "El País" is considered to be left-wing.

Regardless of ideology, therefore, the message is similar, and it is a thoroughly disheartening message. The reasons why Cercas describes the party system as undemocratic and Müller speaks of a non-viable model of the state lie with the way in which the tentacles of the political parties reach out and pull into their lairs everything around them. Their boundaries are all but limitless and they extend into banking, broadcasting and media, you name it.

Regional savings banks, loaded with toxic debt, have been at the centre of Spain's banking crisis. And these banks have been synonymous with political interference and cronyism. The crisis that engulfed Bankia might have been more swiftly resolved had the government taken a firmer stance with its now ex-president Rodrigo Rato. But who was it who got Rato appointed to Caja Madrid before it became part of Bankia? Mariano Rajoy.

The national, state-funded broadcaster, RTVE, has lost journalists who have been sacked as they seemingly had the temerity to question Rajoy's policies. When Catalonia staged its massive demonstration in favour of independence - a news item afforded prominence by the BBC - it merited only fifth place in the news running order on TVE1; the lead item was a meeting between Rajoy and the Finnish prime minister.

Banks and broadcasters are just two examples of the reach of the political parties. This reach goes wider, though. The parties are giant clubs, membership of which often owes little to political ideology but much to networks, families and the nepotism of "amiguismo". Their ranks are littered, as Javier Cercas points out, with the servile, and the parties "banish competition and punish dissidence".

Such punishment strikes a chord in Mallorca. Antoni Pastor, who has dared to oppose the PP's language policy, has been banished from the party. His expulsion was less an act of imposing discipline more one of immaturity that cannot countenance argument and debate.

It is not just the PP, though goodness knows the PP seems to find itself caught up in scandal with disturbing regularity. It is also PSOE and smaller parties. In Mallorca, one need look no further than the Unió Mallorquina. Everything it touched, certainly towards the end, seemed tainted with the odour of corruption.

Much of the scandal surrounding the UM has been to do with money diverted illegally to party funds. This is the same allegation now being made about the PP. Cercas calls for "clean and reasonable" financing of political parties, but funding is just one aspect of a system described by Müller as "corrupt and inefficient", one run by an "incompetent political caste ruining the nation for several generations".

*Javier Cercas' article: http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/10/29/inenglish/1351523226_339831.html

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