Democracy in action!

It is better that I write this now rather than wait until tomorrow when my bile might have reached the levels of vicious incoherence!

Spain has gone to the polls.

The choice they had is illustrated in the picture above: from left to right we have the leader of PSOE, Podemos, C's and the tiny malicious dwarf on the right is the deputy leader of PP, sent to that particular debate because the Prime Minister was too scared to take part.

They have now closed and, in one of the most excitingly unpredictable political battles in the history of Spanish democracy there has been as turnout of less than 60%! It perhaps demonstrates just how much damage has been done by the elected kelptocracy of terminally corrupt politicians who have been governing Spain for the last few years. The imposition of a so-called king by the nefarious complicity of the two old major political parties; the almost boring daily revelations of mendacious and selfish behaviour by PP members past and present; the use of public money as personal cash by the politicos and, until the election campaign an almost monastic silence on the part of the Prime Minister when it came to explaining to the Spanish public just what his bunch of criminals was doing and had done – these are just a few of the concerns (to put it mildly) that voters have had about the election. However you explain it, the poor level of participation seems to me to be an absolute condemnation of the political system here in Spain at the moment.

We have been told by ALL the previous polls that the end result of this election will be that the largely discredited party of the Conservatives, PP, will 'win' the election but lose their overall majority. The equivalent of the Labour party, PSOE will come second. In third place will be the new right-wing party of Ciudadanos, C's, led by a photogenic lawyer and ex-competitive swimmer with not a single coherent philosophical political idea in his pretty little head but the acquisition of power and stopping Catalonia breaking away from Spain. In fourth place will be Podemos, a new left-wing party which, in my opinion, has the best and most radical ideas for transforming Spain for the better.

It turns out that ALL the previous polls might be wrong about the 4^th placed party. Most of the polls and some of the early results seem to indicate that Podemos will be the 3^rd party and could even overtake the PSOE and be 2^nd. I am not a great conspiracy theory believer, but it doesn't take very much imagination to see the powers that be have been making it their job to denigrate a political party that threatens their cosy position of public extortion that they have enjoyed with the two 'great' political parties of the past. Television time and slant has been almost laughably against Podemos and in favour of the telegenic leader of C's. If it turns out that ALL the polls were wrong again (cf. The UK e.g.) then I think that the pollsters should be charged under the mis-selling of goods act or equivalent.

I still find it incredible that a quarter of those who turned out to vote were able to cast a vote for PP. I truly cannot imagine a more horrendous build up to an election than the series of televised disasters that were the daily staple of our political viewing. In spite of the obvious corruption and the flaccid attempts to deal with it, people are still prepared to lower their intelligence and put the PP list into their voting envelopes. To be fair, the present projections of the losses of PP seats is little short of a disaster and the few, desultory people waiting outside the (illegally built) headquarters in Madrid show the true feelings about the size of the potential failure to retain power.

We still have over half the vote to be counted but the general trends seem clear and Podemos seems to be well ahead of its erstwhile more powerful competitor C's. If the seat allocation stays as it is then there is no clear winner and no clear way for the foundation of a coalition. The next week or so promises to be a very interesting one.

Podemos needs to be very careful about their pact partners as recent history has shown that the smaller parties have suffered at the succeeding election to their participation.

We live in interesting times. And they promise to continue.

I, of course, was unable to take part in this election because it was a National Election and my vote is confined to local elections. I can therefore look from my non-participatory heights and take a sadly academic view of the compromise that the country will have to deal with.

Who knows what tomorrow might reveal!