Sometimes silence is better than gold, dear reader. And today is one
such day. When I got up this morning, it was with the intent of writing an
elaborate, lengthy, well-argued and utterly profound analysis of yesterday’s
general elections in Spain. But what do you think I discovered, when – for a
quick check-up - I re-read previous political comments Alfred B Mittington had
made? Well, I discovered that the Mittington Analysis of the municipal
elections of May 24th last, is still perfectly valid and applicable
to yesterday’s national elections! All you need to do is ignore the timeframe
and pretend we’re talking about the national parliament instead of local
councils. Read it here if you’re interested.
So that simply leaves giving you yesterday’s results and the
forecast for the future. The former is pretty easy; the latter less so.
Limiting myself to the four big parties that really matter the seats won in the
Madrid Cortes are:
PP (conservative) 123
Ciudadanos (liberal) 40
PSOE (socialist) 90
Podemos (radical left) 69
This result is hailed as a triumph by the two new parties (Ciudadanos
and Podemos) and by everyone who is sick or tired of the old petrified two-party
system in which PP and PSOE alternated in power, both abusing it to their
heart’s delight when their turn came. However, it is one thing to applaud a
socio-political watershed for the history book, Max Weber style; and quite
another to govern a country in deep trouble, like Spain is today. This fragmented,
shattered & scattered, parliament obliges the political leadership to form
some sort of coalition; and even if Spaniards were temperamentally fit for that
(and believe me they are not!), it would still be an impossible job, as no
workable combination (i.e. naturally left-leaning or right-leaning) reaches the
parliamentary majority of 176 in the 350 seat lower house.
You can do the math for yourselves; but believe ol’ Al’ when he says
that there are only two, equally unthinkable combinations which add up
numerically.
The first is a coalition of the PP and the PSOE, good for over 210
seats This would be a laugh, after the 40 years these two have been at each
other’s throats like Cain and Abel, and it would immediately be seen as the
Coalition of the Biparty Dinosaurs, trying to hold on to their old dominance of
power. Let’s see how well that goes down with an electorate which has just
shown it is sick and tired of just that.
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| 'You first…' - 'No! You!' |
The second is what was already dubbed long ago as the Coalition of Losers:
PSOE, Podemos and Ciudadanos, leaving the formal victor out of the loop. In a
northern country, like Germany or The Netherland, this might work, as these
places have a long democratic history and much experience with the subtleties
of coalition-building and maintaining stability. But Spanish democracy is young
and passions are strong and honour is a (deadly) virtue among the Dons. So I
fail to see how these Three Graces could possibly decide upon a threesome. I
mean: one of them would have to undress first, and then they’d have to agree
upon all sorts of positions…
In short: Spain is living in interesting times, as the Chinese curse
goes.
You want my wildest guess as to the future? My wildest guess is that
they will put in some minority government supported by the tiny arms of a whole
range of Lilliput lower house factions. It will be the shortest-lived
government of Spanish democracy; and in 2016 we’ll have new elections. And then
let’s see if the Bipartisan Jurassic truly ended yesterday evening…
