Regulatory change is the normal state of affairs when there are changes of government. But the extent of this change will depend on how different parties A and B really are. If ideologies are set to one side and there is a pragmatic centre ground of only minor fluctuation, then change will be slight, which has the advantage of mostly everyone knowing where they stand. Institutions, organisations, societies generally abhor upheaval and uncertainty. They like things as they are, but they don't always stick to this line of thinking. Change is deemed necessary.
In football, to use a trite example, you can get situations such as Crystal Palace. Upheaval, essential in order to keep the filthy lucre of the Premier League flowing in, means the booting into touch of an Alan Pardew fannying around and going nowhere (except down) by the heavy boot of a Big Sam. He may unfairly be characterised as a Route One advocate, but let's accept that he's sort of Route One and a Half, whereas Pardew was Route M25, going round and round in circles and unable to see light at the end of the Blackwall Tunnel.
To return to politics, ideologies do of course hold sway. Party A adheres to its set, as does Party B. Ne'er the twain do they therefore meet. Which would be simple enough to understand, except when there are Parties C, D, E, F and possibly G to take account of as well. Among this array, there will be voices which insist that they are not engaging in ideologies and are being pragmatic. Which is a load of nonsense. It is pragmatism that suits the party which is declaring it, as also does the constant cry of consensus. This is fine so long it's my consensus and not yours, which doesn't make any sense but can do when one or other parties are browbeaten into finally giving up arguing and going along with the consensus for the sake of a quieter life.
This is the situation which exists within the Balearic government, in the Balearic parliament, at the Council of Mallorca and at the town hall in Palma (as well as some other town halls). On the ruling side there are PSOE, Més and Podemos, with Podemos either formally part of the administration or not. Each has its ideologies, with Podemos having the oddest. They are, as often as not, ideologies of putting a spanner in the works just for the sheer hell of it. Normal rules of political protocol don't apply.
On the opposition side, there are the PP, El Pi and the C's (plus Party G in the Balearic parliament, the Gent per Formentera, all one of them). Each of them, with the exception of the Gent who ideologically aren't anywhere near the other three, occupies territory of varying degrees of right of centre. Of them, El Pi can be the most contrary. It does rather depend on which part of its regionalist-nationalist inner ideology happens to be dominating on a given day.
Which brings us to how change comes about. El Pi sided with the left in pushing through the change to Mallorca Day by the Council of Mallorca. Yet previously, when its chap was heading the Mallorca Day committee before he resigned because no one was listening to him, it had been on the side of keeping 12 September. There must have been a realisation that on ideological nationalist grounds there could be no alternative but 31 December, so the votes were duly cast.
The PP, also divided on inner ideological grounds, has said that it will change the day back again. And why would they do that? Well, because they'll be able to, one supposes. Because they've opposed 31 December, there's no better reason to later revert to 12 September. Personally, I believe 31 December makes complete sense, but sense is not what we're talking about. It's ideologies which matter along with the impulse to change things just because you can. Més say that 31 December will be better because the citizens will take more interest, which is further nonsense. The citizens won't. Theirs is a justification raised so as to disguise ideological motives.
What else is batted across the political ping-pong table? The name of Palma is one. The PP, aided and abetted by the C's, will add "de Mallorca" once more. Why? Well, because it's practical to do so, which may be true but is also right-wing speak for saying we don't like what the left are doing.
And so the list goes on, no one ever quite knowing where they stand. One side says Catalan, the other side says Castellano, so changes the rules only for them to be changed back again. Everything changes because it can be changed, even current governmental agreements for change. Just ask the ideologues of PSOE, Més and Podemos.
Showing posts with label Ideology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ideology. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Monday, June 06, 2011
So-So: Whither PSOE?
Among the many strange aspects of Mallorca's politics, one of the stranger is the sheer anonymity of the party now exiting stage left. PSOE in Mallorca has been largely synonymous with Francesc Antich, especially during its period of government just finished. In its previous administration, it had more recognisable characters, such as Joan Mesquida, now the national secretary-general for tourism, and Celestí Alomar, the then tourism minister and now head of the Balearics division of the Costas authority, but they became recognisable largely because it was they who were responsible for the aborted and hated eco-tax.
In the past four years, however, barely anyone else from PSOE has come to the public's attention. Carles Manera, the finance minister, was largely unknown; Joana Barceló only grabbed the headlines when she was landed with the poisoned chalice of tourism. Greater publicity attached itself to members of the government who weren't in PSOE, and usually attached itself to them for the wrong reasons.
Antich is now off to Madrid. The next local leader of PSOE may be Francina Armengol, given a stuffing by the Partido Popular at the elections for the Council of Mallorca. Apart from her, well who is there?
Perhaps it is to PSOE's credit that no one knows who their leading lights are. It has been hard not to know about politicians from other parties engaged in dubious practices or internecine strife, the latter most evident within the PP. But it can also be seen as a failure of the party to really promote itself. The column inches devoted to the PP and to its various characters is disproportionately high compared with those dedicated to PSOE. And it isn't simply because the PP's in-fighting makes it far more interesting than PSOE.
One reason why the PP won the elections so easily and why it, and its politicians, are more in the public eye comes down to the fact that it has a more effective party machine. Its organisation is better.
When one talks about party organisation, one issue that crops up is that of funding. The lion's share of funding comes out of the public purse, and the larger the party and the greater its representation the more money it gets. Like Real Madrid and Barcelona scooping most of television's football money, the rich get richer and the smaller parties and teams lose out.
Given public funding, PSOE and the PP should theoretically be on roughly similar footings, but there is also the matter of other sources of funding. Measures have been taken to make this funding more transparent, but the 2009 report by the Council of Europe into the transparency of funding in Spain revealed ongoing disquiet as to quite how transparent it is, with municipalities particularly coming under its microscope.
Linked to the issue of funding is one of the sociology of political parties in Mallorca. And it is here that the PP knocks PSOE into a cocked hat. Historically, albeit that the history has not even yet reached thirty years, Mallorca is a PP stronghold, a reflection of an innate conservatism among Mallorcans but also of the strength of networks. The PP has been the vehicle through which to get on, to enjoy the spoils in a way that PSOE has never offered.
Ideology plays only a small part in local politics and where it has appeared to, it has been more a thin veneer over the desire for power and for tapping into the Mallorcan networks. The Unió Mallorquina was a classic example. On the face of it, it only differed from the PP insofar as it had a nationalist agenda, but it was one that was understated. It was never a radical party, because radicalism doesn't generally fit with the Mallorcan mindset. Its ideology was secondary to its existence for existence's sake.
For PSOE, the challenges are several. It needs to improve its organisation, to become more visible, to portray greater personality. And it needs to define what it stands for. But here it really faces a problem. As with other parties ostensibly of the left which try to occupy the centre or even veer off towards the right, it can create an ideological confusion. On issues other than the economy, what is PSOE in Mallorca? Is it regionalist, and thus the opposite of the PP? Is it Catalanist? Ditto. What is it? But if ideology doesn't really count for much in Mallorca, the party faces a starker question - whither PSOE?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
In the past four years, however, barely anyone else from PSOE has come to the public's attention. Carles Manera, the finance minister, was largely unknown; Joana Barceló only grabbed the headlines when she was landed with the poisoned chalice of tourism. Greater publicity attached itself to members of the government who weren't in PSOE, and usually attached itself to them for the wrong reasons.
Antich is now off to Madrid. The next local leader of PSOE may be Francina Armengol, given a stuffing by the Partido Popular at the elections for the Council of Mallorca. Apart from her, well who is there?
Perhaps it is to PSOE's credit that no one knows who their leading lights are. It has been hard not to know about politicians from other parties engaged in dubious practices or internecine strife, the latter most evident within the PP. But it can also be seen as a failure of the party to really promote itself. The column inches devoted to the PP and to its various characters is disproportionately high compared with those dedicated to PSOE. And it isn't simply because the PP's in-fighting makes it far more interesting than PSOE.
One reason why the PP won the elections so easily and why it, and its politicians, are more in the public eye comes down to the fact that it has a more effective party machine. Its organisation is better.
When one talks about party organisation, one issue that crops up is that of funding. The lion's share of funding comes out of the public purse, and the larger the party and the greater its representation the more money it gets. Like Real Madrid and Barcelona scooping most of television's football money, the rich get richer and the smaller parties and teams lose out.
Given public funding, PSOE and the PP should theoretically be on roughly similar footings, but there is also the matter of other sources of funding. Measures have been taken to make this funding more transparent, but the 2009 report by the Council of Europe into the transparency of funding in Spain revealed ongoing disquiet as to quite how transparent it is, with municipalities particularly coming under its microscope.
Linked to the issue of funding is one of the sociology of political parties in Mallorca. And it is here that the PP knocks PSOE into a cocked hat. Historically, albeit that the history has not even yet reached thirty years, Mallorca is a PP stronghold, a reflection of an innate conservatism among Mallorcans but also of the strength of networks. The PP has been the vehicle through which to get on, to enjoy the spoils in a way that PSOE has never offered.
Ideology plays only a small part in local politics and where it has appeared to, it has been more a thin veneer over the desire for power and for tapping into the Mallorcan networks. The Unió Mallorquina was a classic example. On the face of it, it only differed from the PP insofar as it had a nationalist agenda, but it was one that was understated. It was never a radical party, because radicalism doesn't generally fit with the Mallorcan mindset. Its ideology was secondary to its existence for existence's sake.
For PSOE, the challenges are several. It needs to improve its organisation, to become more visible, to portray greater personality. And it needs to define what it stands for. But here it really faces a problem. As with other parties ostensibly of the left which try to occupy the centre or even veer off towards the right, it can create an ideological confusion. On issues other than the economy, what is PSOE in Mallorca? Is it regionalist, and thus the opposite of the PP? Is it Catalanist? Ditto. What is it? But if ideology doesn't really count for much in Mallorca, the party faces a starker question - whither PSOE?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
No Particular Place - The Unió Mallorquina's internal strife
Politically, the English "ite" is a Spanish "ista". For Blairite or Thatcherite, read, within the warring ranks of the nationalist party in Mallorca, "Nadalistas" or "Munaristas" or indeed "istas" of no particular name. The no-particular-istas have won the battle if not necessarily the war, that of the heart and soul of the Unió Mallorquina party. They have got their man - Josep Melià - who has been confirmed as the new president of the party; the fourth in less than four years, following Mother Munar and two Micks, Nadal and Flaquer, all three of them implicated in corruption cases. Melià has hardly won a ringing endorsement; the vote in his favour was close. He has, as has his rival, one of the former tourism ministers Buils, made the right sort of noises regarding a new phase and stability for the party, but it is unlikely to be anything of the sort. The UM is ripping itself apart on the rocks of internecine strife and the fall-out from the corruption charges.
There is an ideological battle being waged within the UM, one that goes back to the succession process when Mother moved over to become speaker of parliament. It is one of Palma-ism versus the regions, one of right versus centre, one of old ways versus new and one of support for discredited politicians versus those not implicated by scandal. One has, of course, to be fair. No-one has been found guilty, but mud sticks, and the right of the party, identifiable with Nadal and Munar, is setting itself up for discredit by association by maintaining support for Nadal and Munar and for a political mindset that the "new way" wishes to sweep away.
It is never as simple as it might seem, given that the party's Palma-ism garners its own support in the regions, but the northern UM faction - that of former Alcúdia mayor Ferrer and his successor and of Pollensa's mayor Cerdà - represents a more modern form of Mallorcan nationalism, one of the centre and liberalism, that failed to win support when Munar stepped down, but that has now come to the fore. Ferrer, it should be recalled, was Nadal's opponent in the Munar succession fight. Nadal, a Palma councillor, had Munar's backing, as did Buils in the latest vote.
The "Diario" journalist Matías Vallés savaged Nadal and Munar in the paper yesterday. He described Nadal as "ineffable" and compared Munar to Gloria Swanson, hankering for a time when justice was "voiceless" in Mallorca and presiding over her own political funeral. Both have been charged with egoism by their opponents of the new way. It is hard to fathom quite how they can have been seen to have been taking active roles in the latest leadership election, given the ongoing cases against them. It is hard also to fathom the thinking of their supporters, who might be better advised to create some clear blue water. But there is always "innocent until proven guilty" as well as there are enduring motivations of power struggles that any political party is subject to.
Does the fighting have any real relevance though? The UM, though well represented at mayoral level across the island, only finds itself in the governmental spotlight because of the need for coalition. It does have a role to play, therefore. As tourism minister, Ferrer, it might be said, holds the second most important post in the regional government, after the president. But set against the two big parties - the PSOE and Partido Popular (which, some in the UM idiotically claim, have conspired to bring about the corruption charges) - the UM is something of a sideshow. The party has never truly succeeded in making itself a force, partly because it is has not always been clear what it stands for. There is more than a slight sense that it is a sort of flag of convenience for politicians disinclined to ally with the two main parties, especially with the PP which occupies similar political territory in certain respects; a flag of convenience that might be the springboard to satisfy political ambition that might otherwise not be available in a bigger party.
It is the striving for some clarity that is the political debate within the party, one overshadowed by the corruption cases, and the "big thing" informing this debate is to try and shape the UM in the mould of the CiU or PNV, i.e. the centrist and liberal nationalist parties in Catalonia and the Basque country. It is this, perhaps more than anything, that the no-particular-istas want to achieve. Though neither of these parties is militant, they do, nevertheless, herald from regions with a long history of nationalist sentiment; indeed the two regions most clearly associated with historical opposition to a unified Spain. This is not, for one moment, to suggest anything sinister, but it is to suggest that the UM may be willing upon itself a more assertive nationalist posture, albeit one moderated with the humanist tendencies of, for example, the PNV. But unlike Catalonia and the Basque country, there is not and never has been anything of a true nationalist desire in Mallorca. Despite the rise of Catalanism, Mallorca remains an essentially conservative and passive society. Moreover, when I asked Alcúdia's new mayor about "nationalism", he was quick to point out that it wasn't some kind of Little Mallorquínism. The ambition, though, to be something akin to the PNV is almost certainly far-fetched. The PNV is not only the second oldest political party in Spain, it has also been the dominant force in Basque politics.
In seeking a "new way", the UM appears to be embarking on the local road to Damascus in attempting a definition, but one of an abstract political ideology of questionable relevance to the majority of Mallorcans. Far more important is that it distances itself from its recent and current travails, those being played out in the courts in Palma, and ensures that it is not tainted by the Nadalista and Munarista associations. In this respect, it has taken the first step.
QUIZ
Yesterday: The Jam's second album ("This Is The Modern World") and their third single ("The Modern World"), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzSJY5AbEZo. Today: "no particular place to go"; who?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There is an ideological battle being waged within the UM, one that goes back to the succession process when Mother moved over to become speaker of parliament. It is one of Palma-ism versus the regions, one of right versus centre, one of old ways versus new and one of support for discredited politicians versus those not implicated by scandal. One has, of course, to be fair. No-one has been found guilty, but mud sticks, and the right of the party, identifiable with Nadal and Munar, is setting itself up for discredit by association by maintaining support for Nadal and Munar and for a political mindset that the "new way" wishes to sweep away.
It is never as simple as it might seem, given that the party's Palma-ism garners its own support in the regions, but the northern UM faction - that of former Alcúdia mayor Ferrer and his successor and of Pollensa's mayor Cerdà - represents a more modern form of Mallorcan nationalism, one of the centre and liberalism, that failed to win support when Munar stepped down, but that has now come to the fore. Ferrer, it should be recalled, was Nadal's opponent in the Munar succession fight. Nadal, a Palma councillor, had Munar's backing, as did Buils in the latest vote.
The "Diario" journalist Matías Vallés savaged Nadal and Munar in the paper yesterday. He described Nadal as "ineffable" and compared Munar to Gloria Swanson, hankering for a time when justice was "voiceless" in Mallorca and presiding over her own political funeral. Both have been charged with egoism by their opponents of the new way. It is hard to fathom quite how they can have been seen to have been taking active roles in the latest leadership election, given the ongoing cases against them. It is hard also to fathom the thinking of their supporters, who might be better advised to create some clear blue water. But there is always "innocent until proven guilty" as well as there are enduring motivations of power struggles that any political party is subject to.
Does the fighting have any real relevance though? The UM, though well represented at mayoral level across the island, only finds itself in the governmental spotlight because of the need for coalition. It does have a role to play, therefore. As tourism minister, Ferrer, it might be said, holds the second most important post in the regional government, after the president. But set against the two big parties - the PSOE and Partido Popular (which, some in the UM idiotically claim, have conspired to bring about the corruption charges) - the UM is something of a sideshow. The party has never truly succeeded in making itself a force, partly because it is has not always been clear what it stands for. There is more than a slight sense that it is a sort of flag of convenience for politicians disinclined to ally with the two main parties, especially with the PP which occupies similar political territory in certain respects; a flag of convenience that might be the springboard to satisfy political ambition that might otherwise not be available in a bigger party.
It is the striving for some clarity that is the political debate within the party, one overshadowed by the corruption cases, and the "big thing" informing this debate is to try and shape the UM in the mould of the CiU or PNV, i.e. the centrist and liberal nationalist parties in Catalonia and the Basque country. It is this, perhaps more than anything, that the no-particular-istas want to achieve. Though neither of these parties is militant, they do, nevertheless, herald from regions with a long history of nationalist sentiment; indeed the two regions most clearly associated with historical opposition to a unified Spain. This is not, for one moment, to suggest anything sinister, but it is to suggest that the UM may be willing upon itself a more assertive nationalist posture, albeit one moderated with the humanist tendencies of, for example, the PNV. But unlike Catalonia and the Basque country, there is not and never has been anything of a true nationalist desire in Mallorca. Despite the rise of Catalanism, Mallorca remains an essentially conservative and passive society. Moreover, when I asked Alcúdia's new mayor about "nationalism", he was quick to point out that it wasn't some kind of Little Mallorquínism. The ambition, though, to be something akin to the PNV is almost certainly far-fetched. The PNV is not only the second oldest political party in Spain, it has also been the dominant force in Basque politics.
In seeking a "new way", the UM appears to be embarking on the local road to Damascus in attempting a definition, but one of an abstract political ideology of questionable relevance to the majority of Mallorcans. Far more important is that it distances itself from its recent and current travails, those being played out in the courts in Palma, and ensures that it is not tainted by the Nadalista and Munarista associations. In this respect, it has taken the first step.
QUIZ
Yesterday: The Jam's second album ("This Is The Modern World") and their third single ("The Modern World"), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzSJY5AbEZo. Today: "no particular place to go"; who?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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