Spanish elections and politics II: Catalan elections on February 14, 2021

[urutzizu]

Where is PACMA's best shot of winning a seat? Madrid presumably?

Also, everyone assuming that VOX will surge by 3 points over all the polling... remember that everyone expected the same thing in France, and Sweden, and in both cases neither happens. VOX having virtually no electoral history or "last time voters" makes them harder to poll, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the polls are massively underestimating them.

The issue about Populist parties like VOX, RN, Lega, AFD and SD is that they do not have any sort of loyal voter base, like PP and PSOE. Like Podemos and Cs they came out of nowhere, and could disappear just as quickly, as their voters find another party to channel their hatred/disgust of the establishment, corruption, immigrants, catalans... I think they could depending on the circumstances either do way better than polls expect (like Brexit, Finns, AFD, Salvini) or way worse like (FN and SD). I suspect the former, but both is equally possible.  

[urutzizu]

One reason why I am glad where I live uses FTFP since for all its flaws, things like this happen far less often.

Pls, just dont. We get it, you like FPTP, but going to European threads with little actual knowledge of the political situation, and saying that FPTP would be better and we would not have all this mess, it is really not very helpful. You are not the only guy doing it, computer89 was doing it on the Israel thread too, for example. The rest of your post was not an issue for me, but this, this is really beating a dead horse.

Also, like Canada has had a ton of minority Governments too, despite FPTP.

[urutzizu]

This is insane.

Why? Whether one agrees with Catalan Independence as a principle or not, what they did and the way that they did it was clearly a violation of the law and the Constitution. The Spanish Constitutional Court made that very clear before they did it, and they still went ahead with it. I have no doubt that every Court in a Country with the rule of law would have judged the same as the Spanish Supreme Court just did.  

[urutzizu]

For crying out loud, we're talking about locking people up for more than a decade for holding a sham referendum that would have changed nothing even if it had been allowed. This is a comical level of overreaction (or it would be comical if actual people's lives hadn't been ruined by it). Libertarians love to talk on and on about "victimless crimes", but this IS the ultimate victimless crime. No tangible harm whatsoever was caused by the referendum itself - in fact, most of the harm came, again, from the Spanish state's paranoid attempts to stop the referendum. This is exactly the kind of repressive escalation that's likely to drive more Catalans toward nationalism, and break the country apart.

No person was harmed directly - I agree - but the Rechtsstaat was. If Politicians are allowed to violate the Constitution so brazenly and get away with it - whats to stop others from abusing their powers? To take a example from the United States - noone was directly harmed when Trump conspired with a foreign state - and noone was directly harmed when the Polish Government started undermining the rule of law - but they should still be held criminally responsible. Otherwise one emboldens Politicians to erode of the rule of law and violate the constitution even further.

[urutzizu]

Offences against the State do actually exist, even if one dislikes this fact on moral grounds, and they do exist in any Jurisdiction in the world, not just in Spain.
Having a referendum was not illegal, in fact they could have had it perfectly legally if they would have done it as a private initiative, that means used their own money, their own ballot papers, their own polling stations and so on. Or they could have just done it on the Internet like the Venetians did.
What was a crime, was them embezzling public money on a illegal referendum, going against multiple judgements of the Constitutional Court and ripping up the Spanish Constitution. Those are against the law in every western country, namely misuse of public funds, contempt of court and sedition against the constitution and they would be held accountable for them. And they do have victims, as tack correctly pointed out.    

Leaving that aside, the Spanish State does not have any obligation to allow a referendum at all, especially not a sham referendum. Spain is allowed to secure its territorial integrity as it sees fit. One can of course take the British approach, that is let them have a referendum, and if they dont like the result allow another ... and so on. That Spain refuses to go down that path however, is why, odds are, that Spain will still be one country in 10 years time, while Britain will not.  

[urutzizu]

Even if Embezzlement were their only crime, that by itself already is punishable with long prison sentences. Up to ten years in the U.S. for instance.

[urutzizu]

And in Romania the "Social Democratic" Party certainly shares more ideologically with Fidesz then with Pedro Sanchez.

Really though, I dont think that Far-right Influence in Parliament is really something new in Spain. What is now VOX was before just the less savoury parts of PP. The Party was quite literally founded by the Censorship Minister of Franco. It just mixed with some of the moderate right and wrapped up its reactionary tendencies in the Christian Democratic Label.

[urutzizu]

Vox leading in Murcia in case anyone missed that.

And 2nd in Andalucia.

[urutzizu]

PEDRO SANCHEZ, TACTICAL MASTERMIND

I would not say that its a tactical defeat for him. For those in the PSOE establishment, Podemos was always the greater threat than VOX cannibalizing the right. Just look how Susana Díaz/Gonzales did everything in their power (as far as conspiring with PP) to keep Podemos from Power. Podemos weakened and split, while PSOE stays practically stable, is tactically not a bad result for PSOE.
Although it is sad for the Spanish Left overall of course (and its state of being reduced to bitter factionalism), and not good for Spanish Democracy.

[urutzizu]

In fact I suspect UP will become more obstinate after this election since their view might be: after PSOE threw everything at us the damage is 7 seats.  Bad but not disastrous.  We for sure have to stick to our guns.  

Perhaps I am too cynical, but believe that this is what Sanchez tacitly wants: UP refusing to budge, so he can use the excuse to pass the Investure with help of Casado (who has already indicated tonight he is open to talks with PSOE) under the pretense of "creating a stable government in the national interest" or some bubbly statement like that.

If he wanted to govern with UP he would have done so. They agreed on almost everything, the policy paper, Podemos Ministers in Government, Iglesias out of Government, and then he just suddenly ends the talks. It just does not sound to me like someone who wants to govern with Podemos. Rather their marginalisation and delegitimisation seems his goal. But who knows. Speculation on my part. Its not like Podemos is entirely innocent in that whole saga either.

[urutzizu]

So, um, Quim Torra has just been removed from his office by the Electoral Court?