Morning, noon and night it is predicted by the Spanish news programmes that Mariano Rajoy may resign and take his Popular Party with him. The reason, we are told, is that an ex-treasurer of the party has said that he made extra payments to high ranking members of the PP since 2008 or before. The news programmes insists that these ‘payments by plain envelope’ mean ‘black money’, or payments NOT declared on tax forms. This is now found to be palpably untrue. Rajoy has even taken the unprecedented step of publishing his tax declarations on his own website. The payments are part of the declared emoluments and expenses, and as such are completely legal – if rather rich-making.
Showing the kind of hypocritical cynicism that I had hoped had vanished with Felipe González, leaders of the PSOE are insisting on ‘complete investigations’ of something that has been completely investigated. This is not unusual at all. But for the saintly Rubalcaba to put on his most Dominican face and find all this ‘disgraceful’ would be extremely funny, a Brian Rix Aldwych farce, if it were not so serious. If the PSOE’s plans to dislodge the Popular Party via articles and headlines in their organ El País lead to Sr. Rajoy’s resignation, Spain will be in the same position as it was on the unexpected and unnecessary abdication of King Alfonso XIII in the Thirties, which led indirectly to the Spanish Civil War.
Are we to have civil war in Spain because the PSOE cannot tolerate the Spanish people’s awarding of a huge majority to the PP in the General Election of 2011? Do the denizens of the PSOE have the smallest, even the most infinitesimal idea of what Democracy means?
Does the PSOE find unacceptable that decision made by voters at the polls? I only ask because civil war is always most uncivil, and people on both sides are having breakfast one minute and being put up against a wall the next. This is savagery, and those responsible for planning it, or even wanting it, should be punished.
Politicians who make money through politics should also be punished – but not after a dozen years’ wait as happens now. A criminal caught robbing a house is in court to answer for it the next day. Why should politicians who steal from public coffers not be served the same way?
Why did the ‘Caso Faisán’ and the ‘Andalusian Eres’ which occupied maximum airtime for months and months just crumble away to nothing? Why do we have a Supreme Court whose decisions are then rubbished by a Constitutional Court? Why are judges permitted to belong to one political party, instead of being apolitical – as they should be? In the ‘Faisán’ matter we were interminably informed that a very senior member of the then Government actually telephoned the Faisán Bar to tell its owner a police raid was scheduled to take place and that members of ETA who had planned to meet there with representatives of the Government must not do so. This is surely high treason. Only three centuries ago a Minister committing such a treasonable act would be beheaded. But the ‘Faisán Case’ has been shoved into a drawer. By whom? On what authority? In Andalucía where the PSOE has ruled for decades even when they are defeated in municipal elections, Presidents of the Autonomy have re-directed millions of European-donated euros into ‘other channels’, instead of using the money to help the poor and unemployed. But these ‘eres’ have also been shelved. What is happening to Spain?
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