Need Not Cost: Balearics' parliamentary deputies

If a legal reform is drafted, under which the number of deputies to parliament are reduced by 16, who do you suppose would be most prominent in offering a reaction to such a draft? If you reckon that it would be spokespeople from various political parties, then you would be right. But you might not reckon on it being a spokesperson from one sector of the business community.

President Bauzá has put forward the draft to reduce the size of the Balearic parliament from 59 to 43 deputies. When this reduction was first being discussed in September last year, the cut was to have been 18 deputies. Two have, therefore, been spared. 16 from 59, or some 27%, might seem like a lot of deputies to get rid of, but the question is still the same now as it was back in September. Why does the parliament need 43 let alone 59 deputies? A second question also remains. How do they arrive at these numbers in the first place?

The answer to this second question has been offered by Paul Heywood, a professor of European politics. He has said that parliamentary representation in Spain and not just the Balearics is determined "without any guiding orientation". The number of deputies, therefore, are pretty much plucked out of the air. There is a bit more to it than that because there is a territorial-population relationship, but the guiding orientation is, nevertheless, somewhat woolly and indeed open to interpretation. What guiding orientation there is suggests - in general terms - that there should be one representative per 40,000 people. For the Balearics, there is currently one deputy for 19,000 people. Under the reform this would rise to 26,000 people, while the number of seats in parliament would become 24 for Mallorca (nine fewer), nine for both Menorca and Ibiza (respectively, down four and three), and one for Formentera (no change).

The government's justification for the reform is a cost one. It claims that the reduction would result in a saving of slightly more than eleven million euros during the period of a legislature. As such, the motivation for the reform is very much in line with government policy to cut the costs of public administration. But this cost saving is being seen as a smokescreen and as a diversion of attention from other matters. It is also being seen as a ploy to ensure that the Partido Popular always wins elections.

Electoral reform has a tendency to benefit governments which introduce it. Or at least this is how such reform is typically perceived and is certainly how it is being perceived in the Balearics by the other parties and by some analysts. The smaller parties stand to lose out under this reform. Democracy and true representation of the people are, therefore, undermined.

The chances of the draft reform actually becoming law are not as might be presumed. For a reform of this nature, having a parliamentary majority, which the PP has, is insufficient. A two-thirds vote in favour is required. The PP does not have enough deputies to carry this vote. As it is believed that smaller parties will suffer under the reform, it seems unlikely that they would back the government. PSOE, the main opposition, certainly won't be supporting Bauzá.

While it is easy for the opposition parties to toss around accusations of being undemocratic, they are not answering the question why the number is as it is. Or indeed as it would become. There are parts of Spain where the ratio of people to deputy is considerably higher than the 40,000 benchmark. In Andalusia, as an example, the ratio is one per 75,000.

The PP is playing to its audience by challenging the opposition to justify not diverting the 11 million from parliamentary cost to other causes, such as the health service, but in a way it doesn't need to. Does the electorate believe that it is necessary for there to be 59 deputies? Maybe it does believe so, but there is no truly convincing argument as to why.

Opposition parties being as opposition parties are, one would expect them to oppose the reform, but what of the support for the government? Who is the spokesperson from a sector of the business community who has voiced support? It is the president of the Mallorcan hoteliers federation. And what, pray, has this reform got to do with the hoteliers?

The federation's president, Aurelio Vázquez, says that the reduction would be in line with the hoteliers calls for rationalisation of public expenditure and that other political parties should support the government. The federation has every right to express its views, but is it really appropriate for it to be getting involved? There is a suspicion that it gets its way with PP legislation as it is, and by voicing support, it will only make opposition parties less inclined to back the government.

The reform seems reasonable enough, but a key justification is in danger of being lost in the argument. Need, and not cost or what the hoteliers might think. Why are so many deputies needed? They aren't.


Index for April 2014

Alcúdia's Mile - 4 April 2014
Alcúdia's port - 25 April 2014
All-inclusives and PSOE policy - 28 April 2014
Article salat at IB3 - 17 April 2014, 29 April 2014
Balearic parliamentary deputies reduction - 30 April 2014
Bullfighting - 22 April 2014
Fairs in April - 5 April 2014
Calvia and Sóller on Trip Advisor - 10 April 2014
Camping in Mallorca - 15 April 2014
Corruption and residence cards - 3 April 2014
Cricket season, Mallorcan tourism season - 7 April 2014
Feuds - 18 April 2014
Francina Armengol wins PSOE presidential nomination - 8 April 2014
Gabriel García Márquez and Day of the Book - 20 April 2014
Insecurities in Mallorca - 1 April 2014
Low-cost hotels - 16 April 2014
Mallorca's plain and tourism - 6 April 2014
May hotel occupancy in Mallorca - 24 April 2014
Mayors rebel against President Bauzá - 12 April 2014
Nicknames - 23 April 2014
Palm Sunday - 13 April 2014
Pancaritat Easter picnics - 19 April 2014
Partido Popular and discounts - 26 April 2014
Playa de Muro's boulevard - 11 April 2014
Summer season in Mallorca - 27 April 2014
Ten things that changed Mallorca's tourism - 14 April 2014
Theme parks - 2 April 2014
Tourism museum in Calella - 9 April 2014
Tourism raw material - 21 April 2014

MALLORCA TODAY - Rationalisation of Mallorca's town halls

A further measure to be adopted by the national government relates to the function of public administration in Mallorca. This will lead to some rationalisation, notably that responsibilities assumed for certain services by towns with under 20,000 people (most of Mallorca's towns) will shift to the Council of Mallorca, thus eliminating duplication. The number of councillors at town halls is to be reduced as well, but only from 2015, the time of the next local elections.

See more: Ultima Hora

Rationalising Tourism

A fortnight is not a long time in Mallorcan politics. It has proven to be a very short time when it comes to the organisation of the island's tourism politics. Two weeks ago, 27 July (Guilty By Associations), I wrote about all the various bodies that litter Mallorca's tourism industry, little knowing - but always hoping - that there was about to be some tidying up. One of these bodies, the Fundación Mallorca Turismo, is to have its foundations dug up. It will collapse into the island's dusty ground whence it should never have been allowed to rise in the first place.

Responsibility for all tourism promotion and affairs is to be handed back to the regional government and to the Delgado tourism ministry. The Fundación, which falls under the Council of Mallorca, will be wound up.

One imagines the decision was not a difficult one. The Partido Popular, in charge of the Council and the government, has made it clear that it will seek to eliminate duplications in public administration, and the divvying up of tourism responsibilities between Council and government was one of the most obvious and one of the most absurd.

During the last administration, the Council and therefore the Fundación had acquired ever more responsibilities for tourism. Not all were duplications, but some, especially those in respect of promotion most definitely were. Quite what the thinking was, was hard to fathom, yet one partner in the old administration coalition, the PSM (Mallorcan socialists), had sought even more tourism powers for the Council. It was hard to fathom because tourism is central to Mallorca's economy, and so should be right, slap bang in the heart of the government, not in an island authority. The PP is righting this mysterious wrong.

One area of responsibility that will stay with the Council is that for the Mallorca Film Commission. Going to the ministry, in addition to general promotion, are various others, such as the commercial missions to China and so-called product clubs - for cycling tourism and the other tourism "alternatives". What happens to staff is not entirely clear. There will probably be some jobs found for them at the ministry, but underlying the scrapping of the Fundación, in addition to the wish to get rid of duplication, is an unstated sense of the PP being determined to also get rid of a system of jobs for boys and girls. And it is this system which raises a huge question mark over the whole of the Council of Mallorca.

Maria Salom, the president of the Council, has announced that the Council is up to its neck in debt to the tune of 329 million euros. It is some way short of the debt that the regional government has, but it is a public debt that Mallorca can ill afford to have hanging over it and it is a debt that is hard to understand, for the simple reason that it is hard to understand what the point of the Council is.

Salom, you begin to think, is like a chief executive sent in with the express purpose of rationalising a business within a conglomerate; rationalisation that is usually a euphemism for elimination. The left are expressing their concerns that this might in fact be the intention. Coming on top of the announcement of the closure of TV Mallorca, also under the Council, the winding up of the Fundación might indeed represent a step in the direction of what the PSIB (the Balearics wing of the PSOE socialist party) is claiming is a process of seeking to "liquidate" the Council. Salom, to emphasise the point, has said that were the Council a business it would be declared bankrupt.

I make no bones. I'm not a PP fan. But the left are surely barking up the wrong tree when they see a political agenda to what, were it to come about, would be sound public administration. I've argued the case for cutting back the Council or getting rid of it for some years. Not for political reasons, clearly not in my case, but for organisational reasons. And with the island's public finances more or less down the pan as it is, then quite how sustainable the Council is, is a very reasonable question to pose.

PSIB seems to think that responsibilities for the highways and social well-being would disappear along with the Council. This is crazy. The government is just as capable of administering these as the Council is. The fact that such responsibilities are granted to the Council under agreements relating to the running of the autonomous community of the Balearics doesn't mean to say they have to be granted.

I see no political agenda. This would not be a Thatcher-style vindictiveness, one that put paid to Ken Livingstone's GLC. It would be straightforward pragmatism, something that the left seem not to appreciate.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The 169 Position: Rationalisation of government companies

Call me clairvoyant, but the Balearic Government's rationalisation of its so-called "companies" is to bring about a merger between Inestur and IBATUR, two tourism agencies which have, since the former was established seven years ago, duplicated much effort. It is hardly public administration rocket science to appreciate that there is no point in having two agencies. A question should be, though, why there ever were two; why Inestur was ever formed. Its main purpose seems to have been as a conduit for siphoning off public funds into the coffers of the Unió Mallorquina party - allegedly.

The rationalisation affects at least a half of these companies, of which there are - get this - 169. What on earth are they all and what on earth do they all do? Add them into the various levels of government in Mallorca, and you complete the picture of the insanity of the public sector for an island with under a million people (or a couple of hundred thousand over a million, if you lump in the whole of the Balearics). But in announcing the rationalisation, President Antich has said that jobs are not to be affected. Why ever not? Simple. It would be politically unacceptable and would merely add to the unemployment burden. Were these "real" companies, however, with "real" shareholders, mergers would lead to job losses. What savings are truly going to be achieved by maintaining jobs that will still duplicate effort? The turf wars that will result from these mergers would be the stuff of dreams for a management researcher studying cultures in combined businesses; they are a recipe for unproductive behaviour and organisation.

There are all manner of suggestions and observations flying around as to this rationalisation process. "The Bulletin", commenting on the fact that the agriculture and fisheries ministry is to be swallowed up by the office of the presidency, asks why such a ministry is needed. Agriculture is far less important than it once was, but it still is important to Mallorca. Potato exports, almonds, wine, the traditional subsistence crops such as cabbage; they are hardly unimportant. And if one takes the words of those "gurus" from a few days back, agriculture should be something of the back to the future for the Mallorcan economy. No, there probably is a need for such a ministry, if, that is, one believes agriculture to be of strategic significance, like tourism.

Strategic. That is something missing in all this. A suggestion from the left-wing Bloc is that the tourism and transport ministries at government level should be scrapped and responsibilities handed over to the island councils, such as the Council of Mallorca. Why stop at these? Why not hand all ministries over to the councils and get rid of the regional government? It's the reverse take on my belief that it is the councils which should go, a move that would make a genuine saving in public spending.

It is the lack of strategic thinking that is worrying. The government is casting around, looking for anything it can to be the target of a short-term fix. Which is not to say that there isn't some sense to merging pointless agencies ("companies"). But the pressing need is for a thorough strategic review - from top to bottom - of the whole system of public administration, which is probably why it won't happen.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.