What next?

 

The Day After The Night Before Syndrome has struck the political ruling class in Spain. 

They had a worrying few hours, as it seemed that their Master Plan to stymie the onrush of the independent movement in Catalonia had disastrously backfired, and then it was confirmed that far from being stopped, the independence parties had managed to retain their absolute majority in the new parliament of Catalonia.

How to spin the disaster? 

The Spanish ruling PP party did exceptionally disastrously in Catalonia: they lost 11 of their seats and now have the shaming total of 3 (three) seats in the new parliament!  And even more humiliatingly, they fail to justify the numbers to be considered a separate group and are now lumped in with the minor parties in the ‘mixed group’ of parliamentarians.

But there was one bright spot for the woefully inadequate political leader Rajoy to go on about.  The fairly new right wing party of Cs gained 25.4 of the votes and 37 seats and will be the largest single party in parliament.  But an absolute majority is 68 seats and so they are nowhere near that number.  If they were to go into coalition they could count of the mighty support of the party with whom they slavishly vote with nationally, PP - so that boosts their total by 3 (sic.) to 40, still 28 seats short of an absolute majority.

They might be able to use the votes of the Catalan ‘socialists’ PSC, as PSC have allied themselves with their natural enemies of PP and Cs against the independence movement in Catalonia.  PSC gained 17 seats, so if they voted with PP and Cs the total strength would be 57, still 11 short of an absolute majority. 

The only other party which is opposed to independence for Catalonia (though they do advocate a binding referendum on Catalan independence some time in the future) is Comú, the Catalan version of Podemos.  Comú is more left wing than the other parties in this grouping and is a very, very uncomfortable bedfellow, even if they could be persuaded to join such an unholy alliance.  And even if they did, their 8 seats would give a final total for the anti-independence grouping of 65 - 3 short of an absolute majority.

On the other side: JxC with 34 seats; ERC with 32 and CUP with 4, make a total of 70 - 2 over an overall majority.  They win.

So, our exiled President in Belgium has offered talks with Rajoy anywhere in Europe other than Spain (where he would be arrested as soon as he set foot on Spanish soil) to start the political dialogue.  This is a situation that needs a political solution.

Rajoy has refused.  Or rather he has offered talks, or as he puts it in his alternative universe, “continued dialogue” (!) as long as the Catalan side is legal i.e. have rejected the idea of independence.  This is a sort of Catch-22 situation where the reason that there is a problem is the only thing that can’t be talked about in trying to resolve it.

I sometimes wonder if Rajoy doesn’t have some orange sash wearing Northern Ireland protestant unionist blood in him somewhere as the only word that he can say (and does with boring regularity) with absolute confidence is, “No!”

Our Spanish “entirely independent legal system” (sic) has stated that it has its sights on other rebellious, seditious and criminal persons of interest who all happen to be leaders of independence groupings.  As some of our political leaders are already political prisoners we can see where this is going.

As these political prisoners have now been elected to the new parliament, how is that going to work?  Are the imprisoned parliamentarians going to be ferried to the parliament building in prison vans and taken back to prison at the end of the day?  How is our likely president going to function when he is in exile in Belgium?  How will the voting take place?  Will the prisoners be allowed to vote?  Is that how Rajoy hopes to reduce the absolute majority of the independence parties to allow more ‘friendly’ fellow travellers to take over?

Rajoy has already said that he will ready and willing to talk to the ‘winner’ of the election in Catalonia: the leader of the Cs.  This is not the way forward.  Unfortunately Rajoy is too politically myopic to see any way forward but his own.

The New Year will bring the first meeting of the new parliament. 

Who knows what might have happened before the vote for the next president!

Everything is still to play for.

More of the same!

I may not live in Britain these days, but I do hope that the vile Conservative government has not taken a leaf out of the viler PP government in Spain and refused free medical treatment to their citizens working abroad who have returned for the Christmas holidays to see their families in Spain.

I am sure if the mean-minded and pettily vicious IDS had anything to do with it then he will have lost no opportunity to urge David Cameron (assuming DC has managed to drag himself and half the Cabinet away from the Christmas Festivities provided by his friend the vile Rupert Murdock - though I have to admit that mere derogatory adjectives fail to capture the true rotten flavour of that octogenarian 'American' – to persecute (you still with me on this epic sentence?) those in a less fortunate situation than his affluent self!

How has Cameron's attendance at the court of one of the most unpleasant media oligarchs in the world today, especially after Murdock's recent court cases and evidence to parliamentary committees, gone down with the British public? Has he been taken to task for openly consorting with such an unsavoury character? Has he been asked why he thinks he can treat the public (who have been misled, lied to and ripped off by this ogre of the airways) with such cavalier contempt that he can ignore the disgust that we feel to see him (even him) in such low company? It is truly amazing what an overall majority can do for your view of the poor bloody infantry that actually put votes in the ballot boxes, as opposed to the rich and unscrupulous who couldn't give a shit about us, but have plenty of money to put into party coffers.

I relish a story told to me by the late Dave Phillips who related the experience of a hapless Conservative candidate canvassing in a Labour stronghold in Wales. He knocked on a door and told the man who answered that he represented the Conservative Party. The man looked at him and asked him to wait for a moment while he fetched his son. He reappeared with his son and then spat at the Conservative and said to his son, “That's how you treat all Conservatives!”

Now, as a wishy-washy liberal, I cannot possibly condone spitting, not only is it a form of violence, but it is also unhygienic! But, god knows, I do understand the vehemence of the response to the generality of Conservatives (with some honourable exceptions who escape my mind for the moment) especially during times of crisis and real human need when it is all too easy to illustrate the complacent attitude of those in power in the Conservative Party (in whatever country) and with money, with those outside who have little or none.

The political situation within Catalonia is just as complicated as that in Spain. The present President did not have a majority in the election to retain his majority and so will have to pact with another party if he is to be re-elected. The problem is although Mas (the President) is plausible, he is also an old school politician whose past includes his being very, very close to an ex-President who is now being prosecuted for fraud and deception. The sort of fraud and deception that the political parties at the time knew about, indeed there is even a piece of film where one politician warns him that his 3% 'commission' that he took would come back to haunt him. Now it has (and the rest of his mafia-like family too) and Mas must have known about it and said nothing. At this stage in the development of Catalonia to have a president who is likely to be charged with something in the near future is not something which we need to be landed with. A left wing party has stated that they would oppose his establishment as president and they have held strong up till now and resolutely refused to back him. The result of this is we in Catalonia do not have a president, in the same way that Spain is without one too.

CUP (the party which opposes Mas) has had a convention today in which some 3,000 members of the party have voted three times on whether to support Mas. The first two votes were 'No', and the third was an exact tie! It all sounds fishy to me, but there you are! We are living in more than interesting times!

Tomorrow the old President of Spain (who remains in office until a successor is elected) is having talks with C's and Podemos. It will be interesting to see what comes out of that and what the leaders of both parties have to say at the end of their meetings with Bromo. We can months of meetings and suggestions before the limit runs out and we have to have another election. I still do not trust either of the main political parties, PP and PSOE, not to sink their differences and unit to preserve their status as the 'power' in Spain in a desperate attempt to keep alive the phantom that bipartisan politics is still a possibility. They are both corrupt and have a lot to lose if their stranglehold on the country is weakened and from their shameless activity in the past they show quite clearly that they are prepared to do anything they possibly can to keep their parasitic suckers deep in the public purse. Anything is possible.

Meanwhile, I might chance a swim tomorrow if my coughing gets less, even if it doesn't it might be a good idea. The only horror is that the kids are going to be swarming around and, even more horrifically until the 11^th of January! Now that I am no longer in school, I can't wait for the kids to return and get off the streets and out of the shops and into a secure environment where they do not interfere with normal human life!

And I've finished a draft of my latest poem, Standing on thin ice, which can be read (and commented on) at

http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/

Any comments will get a reply!