It was January 49BC. Julius Caesar, who had been governor of the province of Spain, was now the the governor of a region that encompassed southern Gaul and Illyricum. With the period of his governorship ending, he was ordered back to Rome and to disband his army. He didn't. Instead he took the 13th legion across the Rubicon, an act that was considered to be insurrection and treason. As the army marched across the shallow river, he supposedly uttered the words "alea iacta est" - the die is cast.
When was the Rubicon crossed? Was it on 1 October when the referendum was held? Was it when independence was declared? Was it when they started sending people to prison? The story of the Rubicon has come to mean the point of no return. The die is cast. There is no going back. Carles Puigdemont spends his time in Brussels coffee houses and on foreign television. He will eventually come back, but is there any going back for him, for Catalonia, for Spain? Puigdemont, the Catalan Caesar, sought for insurrection and treason.
At the time when it looked as the chief of the Mossos, Josep Lluís Trapero, might be sent to prison, I remarked to someone that it would represent a crossing of the Rubicon. You don't start sending people to prison. Regardless of all that has happened and is happening, once that step is taken, moral authority begins to crumble. Legal authority may apply, but this is not the same as moral authority. Especially not in supposed western democratic societies.
And under whose authority? Do we praise the independence of the Spanish judiciary in pursuing prosecutions of a type unheard of since the failed coup of 1981? Can we compare the insurrection of Antonio Tejero Molina with that of Carles Puigdemont? Or has this independence been compromised, as has been suggested on previous occasions? Is there some justification in the characterisation of those incarcerated as political prisoners? Western democratic societies don't do or shouldn't do political prisoners.
José Miguel Monzón Navarro goes under the stage name of El Gran Wyoming. He fronts a show on La Sexta that looks at the day's news. He walked off set the other day, saying that he refused to continue with the programme. "I will not continue presenting it until Spain returns to sanity." Oriol Junqueras and others had been sent to jail. For El Gran Wyoming, the Rubicon had been crossed. He did, however, return a few minutes later.
His statement and action was nonetheless meaningful. Spain has been gripped by an insanity. It is the underlying madness which refuses to mature and to cast aside the past. It constantly hankers after its history. It is incapable of adjusting to democratic realities, even after forty and more years. I'm not defending Puigdemont, I'm not defending independence, but I am defending the cause of democratic maturity. Both sides are to blame for their juvenile behaviour.
But attaining this maturity, it seems increasingly clear, is inhibited by the very democratic fundamentals of the Spanish (and Catalan) political system. Puigdemont, the accidental president, a creation of his own belief in independence, might nevertheless chosen not to have crossed his own personal Rubicon. To what extent was he hounded towards a defiance of the Senate by the consequences of political alliance and the need for support from sources that veer in the direction of anarchy? To what degree was he pushed by the timeline from Artur Mas and his misjudged election that was held in an attempt to shore up declining popularity because of austerity policies and by his subsequent reach for the independence lifeline in order to save him?
We can all play the history game of centuries and decades past, but there were far more recent dynamics that unleashed the eventual insurrection. And these dynamics, reflected for example in the Balearics, have exposed proportional representation as a device for the tyranny of the minority. In the Balearics, Més in Menorca, with their all but fewer than 7,000 votes at the last election, recognised the independent republic of Catalonia. They are beyond contempt for their inflated sense of self-importance.
But this is how it is. And now that the Rubicon has been crossed, is the die cast for all time? Where is the going back? The metaphor with Caesar ends with the very act of crossing the river. Caesar marched on Rome. Puigdemont is marching nowhere other than to a likely prison cell, a further martyr to a process for which both he and Rajoy are ill-equipped. He got to the other side, only to stumble backwards, drowning in the shallowness of the springs of democracy.
Showing posts with label Proportional representation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Proportional representation. Show all posts
Sunday, November 05, 2017
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
The Least Imperfect System
The pollsters are at it again. No sooner have the elections been dispensed with than they are out with their clipboards or making their phone calls. The latest survey is still a test of electorate opinion: one to test voter satisfaction (or not) with the results of municipal elections. The Metroscopia survey has discovered that 57% of voters are not satisfied with the choices of mayors that have been made, the result in many cases of pacts of parties, none of which obtained majorities or even the most votes.
When you get into the detail of the poll, however, you find that the satisfaction factor varies depending on the sympathies of those surveyed: 88% of Podemos voters, for instance, are satisfied with the pacts that have been arrived at. Well, they would be. They've got a mayor in Madrid, Manuela Carmena, who achieved a 17.7% share of the vote - 287,000 actual votes: the Partido Popular scored twice as much on both counts but is now in opposition.
PP supporters, as with many PP politicians, including the Balearics' own José Ramón Bauzá, are distinctly unimpressed with the current system. 92% of PP voters believe that the party which obtains the most votes should govern, even if it fails to gain a majority. Well, they would. They now no longer have mayors or regional presidents who previously had achieved both the most votes and majorities, as with, for example, the Balearic parliament or Palma City Council.
It was instructive that before the regional election Bauzá was making noises about the most voted-for party having the right to govern (or at least be guaranteed to be part of a governing coalition). When he started making these noises, it was the first time it became clear that he knew how the result would turn out, though even he could probably not have predicted how bad the result would be. For public consumption, he had been saying the PP would get 25 seats: he was five out.
This is not the first time that the electoral system has been exposed to criticism and it won't be the last, but the chances of it being changed are diminishing; not that the chances were ever great. Mariano Rajoy has wanted to make adjustments to give the most voted-for candidates and parties (his own) a better chance, but it would have run up against a problem: the need for a qualified majority in Congress.
For better or for worse, Spain and so its elections - national, regional, municipal - are governed by the D'Hondt system of proportional representation. That the PP and its supporters might not now find this system to be entirely to their satisfaction is, frankly, tough. They knew the rules. Everyone knew the rules. Presumably, they hadn't been complaining or calling for changes when they were winning ample majorities. Defeat through the chosen system is not a reason to change the system just because it has proved to be unsatisfactory in these elections for one particular party.
Even had there been a method whereby the PP in the Balearics would have automatically been given the chance to govern, it doesn't follow that they would have been able to. Bauzá, with more seats and a higher percentage share of the vote than any other party, might have demanded the right to remain as president, but there would still have been the investiture issue: the only way he (or a replacement for him from within the PP) could have been president was through a formal pact, and the only party which could have delivered this was PSOE. It was never going to happen.
The scrambling around to form pacts might appear confusing and even unseemly but it is nothing new. What is new is that there are two alternative and fairly strong political forces - Podemos and Ciudadanos. They have made the coalition process more complicated simply by their presence, but it is this very presence that makes a PP call for the most voted-for party to have a right to govern the more desperate and even rather despicable. The PP (and PSOE) have to accept that the results were as they were because new parties succeeded in diminishing their votes. Rather than criticise the system, they need to be self-critical: they fared as they did because the voters decreed that they deserved to.
There is no perfect electoral system, only the least imperfect. First past the post isn't perfect and arguably it is well short of being the least imperfect. Prior to the British election, the London correspondent for "El País" said that Britain had a weird electoral system, that first past the post sounds like a board game. The Spanish, the Germans and others find Britain's system distinctly odd. Britons might find the Spanish system odd, as some Spaniards now find it not to their liking, but you'll never satisfy everyone, especially PP voters.
When you get into the detail of the poll, however, you find that the satisfaction factor varies depending on the sympathies of those surveyed: 88% of Podemos voters, for instance, are satisfied with the pacts that have been arrived at. Well, they would be. They've got a mayor in Madrid, Manuela Carmena, who achieved a 17.7% share of the vote - 287,000 actual votes: the Partido Popular scored twice as much on both counts but is now in opposition.
PP supporters, as with many PP politicians, including the Balearics' own José Ramón Bauzá, are distinctly unimpressed with the current system. 92% of PP voters believe that the party which obtains the most votes should govern, even if it fails to gain a majority. Well, they would. They now no longer have mayors or regional presidents who previously had achieved both the most votes and majorities, as with, for example, the Balearic parliament or Palma City Council.
It was instructive that before the regional election Bauzá was making noises about the most voted-for party having the right to govern (or at least be guaranteed to be part of a governing coalition). When he started making these noises, it was the first time it became clear that he knew how the result would turn out, though even he could probably not have predicted how bad the result would be. For public consumption, he had been saying the PP would get 25 seats: he was five out.
This is not the first time that the electoral system has been exposed to criticism and it won't be the last, but the chances of it being changed are diminishing; not that the chances were ever great. Mariano Rajoy has wanted to make adjustments to give the most voted-for candidates and parties (his own) a better chance, but it would have run up against a problem: the need for a qualified majority in Congress.
For better or for worse, Spain and so its elections - national, regional, municipal - are governed by the D'Hondt system of proportional representation. That the PP and its supporters might not now find this system to be entirely to their satisfaction is, frankly, tough. They knew the rules. Everyone knew the rules. Presumably, they hadn't been complaining or calling for changes when they were winning ample majorities. Defeat through the chosen system is not a reason to change the system just because it has proved to be unsatisfactory in these elections for one particular party.
Even had there been a method whereby the PP in the Balearics would have automatically been given the chance to govern, it doesn't follow that they would have been able to. Bauzá, with more seats and a higher percentage share of the vote than any other party, might have demanded the right to remain as president, but there would still have been the investiture issue: the only way he (or a replacement for him from within the PP) could have been president was through a formal pact, and the only party which could have delivered this was PSOE. It was never going to happen.
The scrambling around to form pacts might appear confusing and even unseemly but it is nothing new. What is new is that there are two alternative and fairly strong political forces - Podemos and Ciudadanos. They have made the coalition process more complicated simply by their presence, but it is this very presence that makes a PP call for the most voted-for party to have a right to govern the more desperate and even rather despicable. The PP (and PSOE) have to accept that the results were as they were because new parties succeeded in diminishing their votes. Rather than criticise the system, they need to be self-critical: they fared as they did because the voters decreed that they deserved to.
There is no perfect electoral system, only the least imperfect. First past the post isn't perfect and arguably it is well short of being the least imperfect. Prior to the British election, the London correspondent for "El País" said that Britain had a weird electoral system, that first past the post sounds like a board game. The Spanish, the Germans and others find Britain's system distinctly odd. Britons might find the Spanish system odd, as some Spaniards now find it not to their liking, but you'll never satisfy everyone, especially PP voters.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
The Morality Of Proportional Representation
Alberto Nuñez Feijoo is the president of Galicia. A Partido Popular man, he was in Menorca on Sunday at a pre-election regional convention, praising the efforts of President Bauzá but also making observations that go to the very heart of the electoral system in Spain.
There is no such thing as the perfect electoral system. First past the post has the virtues of simplicity and acceptance of the wishes of a majority, but it has the drawback of non-representation of the losing minority. Proportional representation (PR) is designed to address this, but it also has a significant flaw - it can lead to administrations being formed in which the winners, i.e. those who receive the most votes, can be and quite often are excluded.
It was this point to which Feijoo was specifically alluding. He said that "in the PP we know that if we don't win (i.e. get a majority), we cannot govern". He then added, perhaps confusingly, that "if we win, this should correspond to our governing", by which he meant that even if a majority is not achieved, the fact of having gained more electoral support than any other party should guarantee a role in government.
The Balearics is a good example of what he is saying. The PP gained a majority of seats in the 2011 parliamentary election, so there was no grey area. The party won more than the 30-seat threshold and was able to govern alone. In the upcoming election, it is unlikely that it will gain a majority. With allies among other parties all but non-existent, it would be deprived of a role in government through coalition even if - and this will surely be the case - it secures the most seats and also the greatest percentage share of the vote.
Last summer, Feijoo declared his support for a reform in the way that mayors are elected. The Rajoy government was proposing a change, which would have applied only to municipalities, whereby a party gaining 40% of the share of the vote or a clear seven per cent lead over the next party would be guaranteed having its mayoral candidate elected. This reform was due to have been taken to Congress for approval in the autumn, but in the end it was shelved because of an inability to gain support from other parties. Reforms such as this, as President Bauzá has discovered in the Balearics, require more than just having a majority in parliament; they need a qualified majority. Bauzá's wish to reduce the number of deputies in the Balearic Parliament was denied because he couldn't raise the qualified majority from opposition parties which objected to the reduction.
Opponents of the Rajoy reform argued that it was one designed to ensure that the PP, faced with declining support, was able to still keep power. An analysis of the 2011 elections in the Balearics revealed that, had such a system operated then, there wouldn't have been any major differences to the results, but that was 2011 when the PP polled very much better than they will do this year. 40% shares of votes or even seven per cent leads are going to be mightily difficult to obtain.
All this is, for the time being, hypothetical because there is no reform and, where regional elections were concerned, it was not one that had been proposed. Nevertheless, Feijoo was advancing the case for a first past the post-PR hybrid to apply in the Balearics. In so doing, he was making a moral observation rather than one based on the system as it is currently applied.
Does he have a case? Under the current system he doesn't but morally he may well do. He said that "politics is a contract with the citizens and with the polls based on democracy and the free expression of society". And this democracy is such that if the PP gains, as opinion polls suggest, the most seats in the regional parliament and a percentage share of the vote around 32%, it could find itself excluded from government. The free expression of 32% of society would be ignored.
PR does give voice to smaller parties and to wider society, but it can also penalise. Somehow, it seems wrong that a "winning" party should not find a place in government. This said, however, if Feijoo were to get his wish, Bauzá as a possible head of a government comprising all manner of left-wing representatives would be a recipe for even greater chaos than one that solely comprises these representatives.
There is no perfect system, but because PR is imperfect and because it will often throw up anomalies, perhaps it is beholden on parties to adopt more consensual and less confrontational postures towards rival parties. This can very much be said of Bauzá. Morality is one thing; popularity, or its absence, is quite another.
There is no such thing as the perfect electoral system. First past the post has the virtues of simplicity and acceptance of the wishes of a majority, but it has the drawback of non-representation of the losing minority. Proportional representation (PR) is designed to address this, but it also has a significant flaw - it can lead to administrations being formed in which the winners, i.e. those who receive the most votes, can be and quite often are excluded.
It was this point to which Feijoo was specifically alluding. He said that "in the PP we know that if we don't win (i.e. get a majority), we cannot govern". He then added, perhaps confusingly, that "if we win, this should correspond to our governing", by which he meant that even if a majority is not achieved, the fact of having gained more electoral support than any other party should guarantee a role in government.
The Balearics is a good example of what he is saying. The PP gained a majority of seats in the 2011 parliamentary election, so there was no grey area. The party won more than the 30-seat threshold and was able to govern alone. In the upcoming election, it is unlikely that it will gain a majority. With allies among other parties all but non-existent, it would be deprived of a role in government through coalition even if - and this will surely be the case - it secures the most seats and also the greatest percentage share of the vote.
Last summer, Feijoo declared his support for a reform in the way that mayors are elected. The Rajoy government was proposing a change, which would have applied only to municipalities, whereby a party gaining 40% of the share of the vote or a clear seven per cent lead over the next party would be guaranteed having its mayoral candidate elected. This reform was due to have been taken to Congress for approval in the autumn, but in the end it was shelved because of an inability to gain support from other parties. Reforms such as this, as President Bauzá has discovered in the Balearics, require more than just having a majority in parliament; they need a qualified majority. Bauzá's wish to reduce the number of deputies in the Balearic Parliament was denied because he couldn't raise the qualified majority from opposition parties which objected to the reduction.
Opponents of the Rajoy reform argued that it was one designed to ensure that the PP, faced with declining support, was able to still keep power. An analysis of the 2011 elections in the Balearics revealed that, had such a system operated then, there wouldn't have been any major differences to the results, but that was 2011 when the PP polled very much better than they will do this year. 40% shares of votes or even seven per cent leads are going to be mightily difficult to obtain.
All this is, for the time being, hypothetical because there is no reform and, where regional elections were concerned, it was not one that had been proposed. Nevertheless, Feijoo was advancing the case for a first past the post-PR hybrid to apply in the Balearics. In so doing, he was making a moral observation rather than one based on the system as it is currently applied.
Does he have a case? Under the current system he doesn't but morally he may well do. He said that "politics is a contract with the citizens and with the polls based on democracy and the free expression of society". And this democracy is such that if the PP gains, as opinion polls suggest, the most seats in the regional parliament and a percentage share of the vote around 32%, it could find itself excluded from government. The free expression of 32% of society would be ignored.
PR does give voice to smaller parties and to wider society, but it can also penalise. Somehow, it seems wrong that a "winning" party should not find a place in government. This said, however, if Feijoo were to get his wish, Bauzá as a possible head of a government comprising all manner of left-wing representatives would be a recipe for even greater chaos than one that solely comprises these representatives.
There is no perfect system, but because PR is imperfect and because it will often throw up anomalies, perhaps it is beholden on parties to adopt more consensual and less confrontational postures towards rival parties. This can very much be said of Bauzá. Morality is one thing; popularity, or its absence, is quite another.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Misrepresentation Of The People
The Partido Popular has lost a vote in the Balearic parliament. It is the first vote that it has lost during this administration. It will be the last. It was a vote lost because despite the PP having a clear majority, the majority is too low. A qualified majority of two-thirds of the parliamentary deputies was required for them to act like turkeys, vote for Christmas and to see sixteen of their number removed from the chamber. The PP motion to cut parliamentary representation was always destined to fail. The party has no friends in parliament. The motion, the debate, the vote were no more than symbolic.
Nevertheless, the process was worthwhile. Before President Bauzá got it underway, had anyone stopped to ask why the Balearics needed 59 deputies? His opponents refused to back the motion because they feared that a reduction would merely strengthen the PP and would "alter the basic rules of Balearic democracy". Bauzá argued that it was only a cost-cutting exercise: an annual saving of seven million euros. Neither view focused on the core issue. Why 59? And neither view addressed an underlying issue. Just who do these 59 represent?
The opposition speak of basic rules of democracy, but what do they mean? The representation of the people in the Balearics is significantly greater than the Spanish benchmark of one parliamentary deputy per 40,000 people. Basic rules of democracy were not about to have been broken had the Balearics ratio changed from one deputy per 19,000 people to 1:26,000, which is what would have happened if the motion had been accepted. But whether 43 or 59 deputies, there is the subsidiary question - who do they actually represent?
At present in parliament there is only deputy who can be considered to in any way represent a constituency, and that is Margalida Font, the single deputy for the island of Formentera. None of the others can be, because no deputy, including Sra. Font, has a constituency. Comparing the parliamentary system here to the one in Britain may not be fair, and it would be wrong to assert that the British system is by any means perfect or truly representative, but the constituency basis of that system does give greater accountability: an MP is, not always in practice of course, accountable to his or her constituents. In the Balearics there aren't constituents to be accountable to. The consequence of this is that a deputy's allegiance is to the party and to the party alone. There are no constituents to muddy the waters and potentially divide that allegiance.
Coming back to the number of deputies, it is hard to accept the opposition's argument that democracy would somehow be diminished if there were fewer of them. By standards of other parts of Spain, the Balearic parliament is over-represented and would still have been with 16 fewer deputies. But over-representation, even at an unnecessary cost of seven million euros a year, is preferable to under-representation, which brings us to Andalusia.
There, the ratio of deputies to population is one per 77,000, almost double the national benchmark, and it has of course just had a parliamentary election. For a population approximately eight times greater than that of the Balearics, Andalusia doesn't even manage to have twice as many deputies: 109 play the Balearics 59. The representation, whether too little or too great, is cockeyed. And in Andalusia it will be even more so if Susana Díaz does as she has said she will, which is to govern in minority.
The PSOE minority in Andalusia isn't to the tune of one or two seats. It is eight short of the 55 needed for a majority, a far from insignificant shortfall in terms of what her PSOE colleagues in the Balearics might deem to be the "basic rules" of democracy. And the 47 seats have been gained with a percentage share of the vote of just over one-third. How can governing in minority when the minority is as small as it is be considered to be adequately representative? It can't be. Díaz's proposal, supported by PSOE's national leader, Pedro Sanchez, is little short of a disgrace.
Why does she appear intent on minority government and so on avoiding coalition partners? Let's hazard a guess. The partner would have to be one or other of Podemos or Ciudadanos, both of them rivals to PSOE nationally. The last thing PSOE wants at present is to give either of them the credibility that would come from inclusion in a coalition and so also potentially strengthen their support nationally. But between them, Podemos and Ciudadanos gained a quarter of the share of the vote. Denying either of them the chance to be in government would be a snub to the electorate and an abuse of the system of proportional representation.
Nevertheless, the process was worthwhile. Before President Bauzá got it underway, had anyone stopped to ask why the Balearics needed 59 deputies? His opponents refused to back the motion because they feared that a reduction would merely strengthen the PP and would "alter the basic rules of Balearic democracy". Bauzá argued that it was only a cost-cutting exercise: an annual saving of seven million euros. Neither view focused on the core issue. Why 59? And neither view addressed an underlying issue. Just who do these 59 represent?
The opposition speak of basic rules of democracy, but what do they mean? The representation of the people in the Balearics is significantly greater than the Spanish benchmark of one parliamentary deputy per 40,000 people. Basic rules of democracy were not about to have been broken had the Balearics ratio changed from one deputy per 19,000 people to 1:26,000, which is what would have happened if the motion had been accepted. But whether 43 or 59 deputies, there is the subsidiary question - who do they actually represent?
At present in parliament there is only deputy who can be considered to in any way represent a constituency, and that is Margalida Font, the single deputy for the island of Formentera. None of the others can be, because no deputy, including Sra. Font, has a constituency. Comparing the parliamentary system here to the one in Britain may not be fair, and it would be wrong to assert that the British system is by any means perfect or truly representative, but the constituency basis of that system does give greater accountability: an MP is, not always in practice of course, accountable to his or her constituents. In the Balearics there aren't constituents to be accountable to. The consequence of this is that a deputy's allegiance is to the party and to the party alone. There are no constituents to muddy the waters and potentially divide that allegiance.
Coming back to the number of deputies, it is hard to accept the opposition's argument that democracy would somehow be diminished if there were fewer of them. By standards of other parts of Spain, the Balearic parliament is over-represented and would still have been with 16 fewer deputies. But over-representation, even at an unnecessary cost of seven million euros a year, is preferable to under-representation, which brings us to Andalusia.
There, the ratio of deputies to population is one per 77,000, almost double the national benchmark, and it has of course just had a parliamentary election. For a population approximately eight times greater than that of the Balearics, Andalusia doesn't even manage to have twice as many deputies: 109 play the Balearics 59. The representation, whether too little or too great, is cockeyed. And in Andalusia it will be even more so if Susana Díaz does as she has said she will, which is to govern in minority.
The PSOE minority in Andalusia isn't to the tune of one or two seats. It is eight short of the 55 needed for a majority, a far from insignificant shortfall in terms of what her PSOE colleagues in the Balearics might deem to be the "basic rules" of democracy. And the 47 seats have been gained with a percentage share of the vote of just over one-third. How can governing in minority when the minority is as small as it is be considered to be adequately representative? It can't be. Díaz's proposal, supported by PSOE's national leader, Pedro Sanchez, is little short of a disgrace.
Why does she appear intent on minority government and so on avoiding coalition partners? Let's hazard a guess. The partner would have to be one or other of Podemos or Ciudadanos, both of them rivals to PSOE nationally. The last thing PSOE wants at present is to give either of them the credibility that would come from inclusion in a coalition and so also potentially strengthen their support nationally. But between them, Podemos and Ciudadanos gained a quarter of the share of the vote. Denying either of them the chance to be in government would be a snub to the electorate and an abuse of the system of proportional representation.
Monday, September 01, 2014
First Past The Post: Election of mayors
One of the first acts that Pedro Sánchez, the new leader of PSOE, undertook was to let Mariano Rajoy know that he was far from pleased with an electoral reform which the PP plans to push through in time for the municipal elections next spring. This reform would result in the candidate for mayor whose party polls the most votes being pretty much assured of becoming mayor. It is a reform which is being pushed through without the PP having sought cross-party consensus, which would make it the first reform to electoral laws (since democracy) to have been implemented without agreement. It is also a reform which contradicts what Rajoy said in 2013; that the PP would not use its parliamentary majority to change electoral legislation.
PSOE and other parties are claiming that the PP is doing exactly this and that the use of the parliamentary majority amounts to an abuse. Moreover, it is argued that the reform is all about seeking to ensure that the PP keeps hold of power in municipalities. With support having ebbed away, the PP is accused of manipulating the system in order to try and shore up its municipal positions.
At present, the electoral system does permit the selection of a mayor from a party which doesn't poll the highest. It is a system which might appear odd, but it reflects the nature of proportional representation and it gives rise to the types of coalition administrations which are far from uncommon or to what potentially could seem unjust. To give an example, consider the situation in Alcúdia at the 2011 elections. The PP polled 39.25% of the vote, 16 percentage points more than the second placed Convergencia (as then was). This gave the PP eight councillors, one short of a majority in a council of seventeen. Had Carme Garcia, who turned her back on her PSM Mallorcan socialists party, sided with opposition parties, the PP would not have become the ruling administration and Coloma Terrasa would not have become mayor. Whatever the arguments about Carme Garcia, had the PP and Terrasa been denied by a coalition of other parties, there would have been nothing electorally wrong, but morally there almost certainly would have been.
The Rajoy reform proposal has yet to really be made clear - it is not due to go to Congress for approval until October - but it can count on the support of the PP in the Balearics. Its secretary-general, Miquel Vidal, firmly believes that the reform should be effected and that it is one which carries the support of 90% of the electorate. It is not logical, he has said, that a gold medal winner should hand the medal over to the person in third place. The reform will give greater stability, he has suggested. But then, as a good PP man, you would expect him to say this.
What the reform is understood to entail is that a mayor would automatically be elected if his or her party polls 40% of the vote. There is also a stipulation for a lead of seven percentage points over the next party (though this is unclear as it has also been said that it would be five per cent). Reporting is therefore confused. It is being stated as 40% and a seven percentage point lead, when it is surely "or" not "and". This being so, a calculation has been made, based on 2011 results in the Balearics, which suggests that there wouldn't have been any substantial difference had this reformed system applied then. The PP would have gained the same number of mayors. The only advantage would have been that it would not have had to seek support from other parties in certain towns in order for its mayoral candidate to be selected.
In fact, 40% of the vote almost invariably means that a party gains a majority and so doesn't need to seek other parties' support. In this regard, the reform wouldn't make any difference. A seven percentage point lead stipulation might guarantee the selection of a mayor but it would not remove the need for a council to be made up of representatives of different parties. In Pollensa its mayor, Tomeu Cifre, would still have been mayor in 2011, but the PP didn't even manage 25% of the vote. In order to get a majority administration, it would still have had to have indulged in horse-trading with other parties.
And what would happen if there were no 40% and no clear lead? In this instance, apparently, there would be a run-off between the main candidates. Meaning what precisely?
The reform would almost certainly be prejudicial to smaller parties for which aspirations of getting a mayor into power would be dashed. But morally is it wrong to deny a candidate whose party polls the most votes? Perhaps so, but then such is the nature of proportional representation.
PSOE and other parties are claiming that the PP is doing exactly this and that the use of the parliamentary majority amounts to an abuse. Moreover, it is argued that the reform is all about seeking to ensure that the PP keeps hold of power in municipalities. With support having ebbed away, the PP is accused of manipulating the system in order to try and shore up its municipal positions.
At present, the electoral system does permit the selection of a mayor from a party which doesn't poll the highest. It is a system which might appear odd, but it reflects the nature of proportional representation and it gives rise to the types of coalition administrations which are far from uncommon or to what potentially could seem unjust. To give an example, consider the situation in Alcúdia at the 2011 elections. The PP polled 39.25% of the vote, 16 percentage points more than the second placed Convergencia (as then was). This gave the PP eight councillors, one short of a majority in a council of seventeen. Had Carme Garcia, who turned her back on her PSM Mallorcan socialists party, sided with opposition parties, the PP would not have become the ruling administration and Coloma Terrasa would not have become mayor. Whatever the arguments about Carme Garcia, had the PP and Terrasa been denied by a coalition of other parties, there would have been nothing electorally wrong, but morally there almost certainly would have been.
The Rajoy reform proposal has yet to really be made clear - it is not due to go to Congress for approval until October - but it can count on the support of the PP in the Balearics. Its secretary-general, Miquel Vidal, firmly believes that the reform should be effected and that it is one which carries the support of 90% of the electorate. It is not logical, he has said, that a gold medal winner should hand the medal over to the person in third place. The reform will give greater stability, he has suggested. But then, as a good PP man, you would expect him to say this.
What the reform is understood to entail is that a mayor would automatically be elected if his or her party polls 40% of the vote. There is also a stipulation for a lead of seven percentage points over the next party (though this is unclear as it has also been said that it would be five per cent). Reporting is therefore confused. It is being stated as 40% and a seven percentage point lead, when it is surely "or" not "and". This being so, a calculation has been made, based on 2011 results in the Balearics, which suggests that there wouldn't have been any substantial difference had this reformed system applied then. The PP would have gained the same number of mayors. The only advantage would have been that it would not have had to seek support from other parties in certain towns in order for its mayoral candidate to be selected.
In fact, 40% of the vote almost invariably means that a party gains a majority and so doesn't need to seek other parties' support. In this regard, the reform wouldn't make any difference. A seven percentage point lead stipulation might guarantee the selection of a mayor but it would not remove the need for a council to be made up of representatives of different parties. In Pollensa its mayor, Tomeu Cifre, would still have been mayor in 2011, but the PP didn't even manage 25% of the vote. In order to get a majority administration, it would still have had to have indulged in horse-trading with other parties.
And what would happen if there were no 40% and no clear lead? In this instance, apparently, there would be a run-off between the main candidates. Meaning what precisely?
The reform would almost certainly be prejudicial to smaller parties for which aspirations of getting a mayor into power would be dashed. But morally is it wrong to deny a candidate whose party polls the most votes? Perhaps so, but then such is the nature of proportional representation.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
People Talking Without Speaking
Following the demonstration on Saturday which demanded the right of choice in language matters, as opposed to the so-called "Catalan imposition", the regional government of socialist President Antich and his coalition supporters from the nationalists and the left has declared that there will be no change to the policy of the equally so-called "linguistic normalisation". Antich has added that he does not want language to be the reason for confrontation, while the nationalists feel that the demonstration represented a minority and the views of the conservative Partido Popular.
Hmm, well the rhetoric is all starting to sound as there could well be if not a reason then at least a ground swell of opposing views that could indeed lead to confrontation. One sincerely hopes not. Despite the unwillingness of the Palma police to issue numbers attending the Saturday demo, it would seem that there were more marching then than was the case three weeks prior when the pro-Catalan march was held. Perhaps both demos represented minorities. And there may well be some merit in that view. If one takes reasonably believable figures, no more than 30,000 people have turned up to the two demos put together. Hardly a mass movement either way.
One is left with the impression that this whole argument is one of minority interest. While most people on the island would have an opinion, one way or the other, one suspects that most people aren't really that bothered; certainly not bothered enough to go marching through the streets of Palma on a Saturday. There are better things to do - like going to the beach. So political and other groups have hijacked the language debate at a time when, in truth, there are rather more important matters to be concerned about. Not that language is unimportant, but it is an issue for more benign economic times and not times when emotion can overtake rationality. Underlying the Catalan case, one fears, is a certain nationalism, not of the generally sensible Unió Mallorquina one, but of a more radical nature. Poor economic circumstances feed all sorts of tendency, some more extreme than others.
It is against this background that the interview with the PP's Rosa Estaras in "The Bulletin" the other day takes on rather more significance. She pointed out that the PP did actually poll more votes than any other party at the last local elections, but because of the nature of the electoral system, the administration was made up of a socialist-led coalition. It is, as the editor of "The Bulletin" rightly pointed out, something of a lesson for British politicians who now favour a move to proportional representation. That is a whole debate that is not really for this blog, though God knows I could fill a whole month's worth of entries on the subject. But suffice to ask, had the PSOE won a thumping majority last time round and not been dependent upon coalition partners, would its administration now be so committed to the current language policy? Locally, it is less important an issue to the PSOE overall (and the PSOE is, of course, a national party) than it is to the likes of the UM. The theoretically greater democracy of PR gives rise to horse-trading through coalition governments. This is not altogether a bad thing if it results in greater checks and balances, but as much as there can be tyranny through the democracy as practised through the UK electoral system so there is also tyranny through the disproportionately strong voices of minor parties in coalitions. Moreover, PR can lead to a certain stasis in government. And that, when it comes to tackling the greater problems that exist in the Balearics, is perhaps the strongest argument against PR.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - 10cc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJMF59OC64Y. Today's title - silence.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Hmm, well the rhetoric is all starting to sound as there could well be if not a reason then at least a ground swell of opposing views that could indeed lead to confrontation. One sincerely hopes not. Despite the unwillingness of the Palma police to issue numbers attending the Saturday demo, it would seem that there were more marching then than was the case three weeks prior when the pro-Catalan march was held. Perhaps both demos represented minorities. And there may well be some merit in that view. If one takes reasonably believable figures, no more than 30,000 people have turned up to the two demos put together. Hardly a mass movement either way.
One is left with the impression that this whole argument is one of minority interest. While most people on the island would have an opinion, one way or the other, one suspects that most people aren't really that bothered; certainly not bothered enough to go marching through the streets of Palma on a Saturday. There are better things to do - like going to the beach. So political and other groups have hijacked the language debate at a time when, in truth, there are rather more important matters to be concerned about. Not that language is unimportant, but it is an issue for more benign economic times and not times when emotion can overtake rationality. Underlying the Catalan case, one fears, is a certain nationalism, not of the generally sensible Unió Mallorquina one, but of a more radical nature. Poor economic circumstances feed all sorts of tendency, some more extreme than others.
It is against this background that the interview with the PP's Rosa Estaras in "The Bulletin" the other day takes on rather more significance. She pointed out that the PP did actually poll more votes than any other party at the last local elections, but because of the nature of the electoral system, the administration was made up of a socialist-led coalition. It is, as the editor of "The Bulletin" rightly pointed out, something of a lesson for British politicians who now favour a move to proportional representation. That is a whole debate that is not really for this blog, though God knows I could fill a whole month's worth of entries on the subject. But suffice to ask, had the PSOE won a thumping majority last time round and not been dependent upon coalition partners, would its administration now be so committed to the current language policy? Locally, it is less important an issue to the PSOE overall (and the PSOE is, of course, a national party) than it is to the likes of the UM. The theoretically greater democracy of PR gives rise to horse-trading through coalition governments. This is not altogether a bad thing if it results in greater checks and balances, but as much as there can be tyranny through the democracy as practised through the UK electoral system so there is also tyranny through the disproportionately strong voices of minor parties in coalitions. Moreover, PR can lead to a certain stasis in government. And that, when it comes to tackling the greater problems that exist in the Balearics, is perhaps the strongest argument against PR.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - 10cc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJMF59OC64Y. Today's title - silence.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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