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by Vargas
5502 days ago
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Elections in Spain are not rigged, but the quality of Spanish democracy is very low. There are three main points: 1. Electoral Law: In Spain votes are counted according to D'Hondt method in regional demarcations. It favours big parties while penalizing small parties. It makes votes in less densely populated regions more valuable. Both things are perceived as very unfair by many Spaniards. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method) 2. Separation of Power: In Spain, Congress is very powerful while Senate is mostly decorative. People vote once every four years for Congress, then they elect the President. There is no separation between Executive and Legislative. In the U.S. or France you can have a Democrat President and a Republican Congress. That is not possible in Spain, Executive and Legislative are always in the hands of the same party by design. Judicial power is not independent as judges are appointed by the party in power. Older judges (some people may remember Garzon, the guy who tried to incarcerate Pinochet) are independent but younger ones ALWAYS vote whatever is decided by the party that granted them the seat. 3. Political regeneration: In Spain you cannot vote for a person for Congress, you can only vote for a party list. The party will put whoever they want in the list in whatever the order they want. This system has led to a progressive degeneration where only friends and family of powerful party members are listed. Many of the candidates in the upcoming elections (22nd of May) have been found guilty of corruption. Many more are awaiting trial. Almost all of them have no leadership qualities at all. Their only quality is to be a disciplined party member with connections. Parties in Spain are not democratic themselves. Primary elections within a party are almost unheard of. Candidates for any election are decided by the senior management.
In Spain, when a candidate loses, they just wait for the next election, or the next, or the next... until they finally grab power. It is a case of "waiting your turn". In Spain we frequently use "partitocracy" (rule of parties) and "fingercracy" (rule of those who have been chosen by a powerful party member by pointing at them with his finger) to describe our political system. |
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