Spain Corruption Investigations Are Mounting
The most interesting thing about Madrid today is that even though it is engulfed by a plethora of scandals, its Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez remains defiant.
In almost any other parliamentary country, such scandals would make a government resign a couple of weeks back. But Spain operates in completely different terms. While the opposition keeps attacking the government with one scandal after another trying to topple it down by continuous investigations, it finds itself hitting the wall of figures.
Firing a Prime Minister in Spain cannot be done using merely scandals but needs 176 seats in parliament to do it. At the moment, this is politically impossible due to numbers.
Sanchez successfully assembled an unsteady but absolutely loyal coalition which includes left-wing groups, separatist Basques and Catalan nationalists. Until the latter fear more from the conservative party than from scandals around Sanchez himself, he will have no troubles remaining where he is.
This means that we deal with an absolutely ridiculous situation – highly pressurized government working under political deadlock.
Corruption Scandal
Never-ending series of corruption scandals have not only been a problem for Pedro Sánchez’s legal career but have practically prevented him from working effectively as prime minister. According to Reuters, although he has not been accused personally of any crimes yet, he considers the current scandalous activity “an attempt to force him out of office.”
In the last few weeks, the core of the government’s policy programs has almost been overwhelmed by the scandal circus. Instead of important news about changes in healthcare, economy, and housing, all the media attention is now drawn by arrests of ex-cabinet members and searches conducted in the socialist party offices.
With such an approach to protecting oneself, an administration cannot possibly make any decisions regarding the country’s future because, instead of discussing important issues of the time, they waste all their political power dealing with damage control. Every scandal forces ministers to spend several days defending themselves from accusations.
Courtesy of President Of Ukraine (Flickr CC0)Spanish Conservatives
In principle, all these scandals must have been the best present for the conservative opposition in Spain. In fact, support keeps coming to the Right in Spain through the poll ratings as citizens become increasingly unhappy with the current state of affairs. Yet, managing to turn their unhappiness into victory seems to be a pretty tough task.
It is not that Spaniards like what Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is doing, yet they simply do not know whom else to choose when the going gets tough.
According to some political experts, it is rather a problem of distrust that Spain faces right now, as opposed to being a problem of popularity. People can very well want to punish the ruling political party. Yet, there are reasons why they cannot trust their opponents, primarily because of the complex calculations they make when it comes to creating the new government.
This is exactly what lets Sánchez continue ruling Spain. It does not actually matter if he loses any popularity; he has to make sure that his opponents scare more than his entire scandalous period.
The True Risk
Caught up in their attempt to forecast whether this new scandal will lead to a fresh election in Spain, the media is overlooking the greater threat. The true threat for Spain is not the forthcoming elections; rather, it is the threat of paralysis.
If there are ongoing revelations from the judicial proceedings, there is a very great threat of paralysis. This will be a paralysis wherein there is no government that can govern, there is no parliament that can get a majority, and there is no opposition that can oust the government.
But for companies and the economy of the whole country, a deadlock is definitely far worse than the scandal that might even appear in the news. Considering that markets always prefer stability, a country incapable of adopting the budget, reforming itself or even making any economic decisions steadily is quite depressing for any international investor. “Involving several investigations opened against key confidants, such as Sanchez’s number three in the PSOE and his former transport minister in various cases related to kickbacks for public works or oil and gas deals, or procurement of masks during the pandemic,” claims AOL.
The Much Larger Problem
The only thing that has shifted in relation to the Spanish government’s problem is not the notion of whether all of these claims about Sánchez have tainted his reputation. Of course, they have done just that.
What has been far more troubling, on the other hand, is the issue of whether Spain finds itself in a position where its political administration can go through scandal after scandal and yet be totally unaffected by any need for reform.
As this trial goes on, then, the political future of the country will rest not in what happens in court, but rather in what takes place outside of the courtroom. The government does not hinge upon the politician’s ability to win over voters; it hinges upon there being no one that can do better than he.
Essentially, then, this approach offers a refreshingly candid perspective on politics, forcing one to deal with reality.
By David Loran Jr
A successful Editor-in-Chief, journalist for over 6 years, writing about important topics that are going on within the U.S. and beyond.
Sources:
Reuters: Spain’s Sanchez running out of road as corruption probes stack up
AOL: Spain’s Sanchez running out of road as corruption probes stack up
Featured Image Courtesy of FSA-PSOE’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
Inset Image Courtesy of President Of Ukraine’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
