In Spain, Politics via Reddit
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It’s still early to predict what is in store for Podemos.
I'll take a shot: it'll fizzle out, just like Occupy, just like dozens of parties across Europe who manage a decent showing in the European elections and then don't pass the threshold or only do it as a random plankton coalition. That, and direct, all-inclusive democracy generally doesn't work. But they're ditching that from the looks of it so who knows.
Amazing term! Did you just invent that on the spot or is it a thing?
Spanish politics have been very polarized with only two major parties sharing the power since the end of Franco's dictatorship (late 70s). During the last few years (and amplified by the economic crisis) people have been growing weary of their actions and general perception of impunity. Podemos is a young political party born as a reaction to that.
Here [1], you can see the last official government polls (from July 14), where the declining trend for major political parties is very clear, and Podemos as a new party is the 3rd most popular option. The next polls should confirm the trend, but the general feeling in Spain is that Podemos is still growing in popularity.
Note: I'm originally from Spain, although not currently living there.
edit: This additional poll from Sept 29th [2] (in Spanish) confirms the Podemos rising trend I was referring to.
[1]: http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/08/04/media/1407160041_786585....
[2]: http://www.lasexta.com/noticias/nacional/pierde-puntos-inten...
People are tired of corrupted politicians after years of crisis and them not fixing anything, and just being perceived as stealing money... Podemos appeared in the exact moment to take that momentum and is getting support from people everywhere: students, middle-age people, elderly people... Don't think they'll win the 2015 elections but they'll play an important role for sure.
Syriza in Greece won the European elections and may govern in the future. FN is rising in France. UKIP in UK.
And in Spain Podemos is not fizzling out at all, the last polls put it as the 3rd party and getting very close to be the 2nd one, and even if they disappear what the polls seem very sure about is that neither center-right nor center-left could govern by themselves, and if they need to create a coalition that would mean political suicide for any future elections, at least with the current political atmosphere, maybe they are able to sell that coalition somehow. But there's probably too much corruption at the moment to sell it as anything else than as the last "let's keep stealing money" card.
There's a reason mainstream parties are mainstream. Usually, they adjust to push out new contenders. Although the immigration issue (a driver for FN and UKIP) is interesting because some are far too invested to turn around now.
Of course "Teach children positive messages and pride in their country" (which immediately brought to mind a law passed by the right-wing in France aiming at emphasizing "the positive role of colonization").
It resonates with the working classes who have had their wages held stagnant by competition from immigrants from low-income countries.
Unfortunately, no other party has even begun to address that issue so they get to collect a lot of votes.
Furthermore, the way that all of the other parties dismiss any complaints regarding immigration as "pure xenophobia" only hands them even more votes.
Which is unfortunate because they're total assholes.
What is particularly worrying is that through a mix of bad economic results and an economic policy borrowed from the right-wing, the current government is incredibly unpopular. At the same time, the right wing has lost most of its credibility due to both numerous corruption scandals (and more coming to the surface on a regular basis) and infighting. With a completely withered left, this leaves the road wide open to the extreme right wing.
From my understanding, it means that for whatever reason you get an income above 1 million € this year for selling a company or renting apartment complex, or any other mean, the 75% tax does not apply to you.
The biggest contributors so far seem to be Football clubs, and likely some financial institutions. I don't have the exact number at hand but it is projected to only raise 200 millions. It concerned about 400 companies and 1000 people. It was only applied for 2013-2014 and seems to be abandoned for 2015.
For the most part, the uber rich are not rich because of their salary. Bill Gates or Steve Job, had they been French, would not have payed the 75% tax.
That does not make the idea less socialist, but I think it is a bit overblown internationally given how few people are impacted.
I think the thought mattered more than the actual tax. You could sense that the ultra-wealthy all around the world hated it. Made them feel persecuted, perhaps, despite it being ultimately pretty toothless.
The reality is that Europe has been in a state of ideological vacuum for a while. The hard right (including most dramatically fascism) really failed between 60-40 years ago as a movement. The hard left failed 25-35 years ago as a viable movement. The old left-right paradigm continued. In many places it's been centrist policies combined with left wing rhetoric. How long can that be the paradigm?
All that's left is the reality that governing bodies, parties and paradigms have been under fire for 5 years now. Political populism and dissidence sells. All that's left is to find a rhetoric that appeals to young, radical or reactionary pockets of political capital.
To me, one of the important takeaways from marxism/socialism is that forces of political stability and instability dictate history to a large degree. I'm very far from Marx on his determinism, but I agree with the broad brush idea. If the current paradigm is both unsustainable and unchangeable, pressure will mount. Technology is a force that Marx never truly reckoned with, but it contributes to the process. If people don't benefit from the system or suspect they could benefit more from some other system, they'll try to kill the old system.
UKIP make almost as much effort to recruit from the hard left as they do from the hard right.
Correct. It appears that the established parties do not dare touch big visions any more. In itself, I expect most people would actually be happy with this, as long as it works. The problem is that in most of Europe it doesn't: the recovery from the financial crisis in the Eurozone is now actually lagging the recovery from the Great Depression.
And yet, my experience in Germany is that there is complete silence about the failure of politics. When polls show low approval for policies, even journalists tend to excuse this by saying that the policies just haven't been explained properly to the population. The possibility that the mainstream consensus regarding Eurozone policies might be wrong is not seriously considered. There is no serious intelligent debate about political choices.
This is also a failure of journalism. I had some hope when Frank Schirrmacher, one of the editors of the FAZ, a very influential serious newspaper, made steps towards raising the possibility that the mainstream consensus is wrong. Unfortunately, he died recently.
Ultimately, people feel misrepresented by the mainstream parties. The result is a mixture of apathy in the form of dropping participation in elections, and remaining voters going to the non-mainstream parties, which tend to be more extreme.
I think it's often that realities are politically indigestible.
State institutions all over the world are big. All the political momentum (right and left) and big vision projects stem from expanding them have been done. School/University systems, health systems, welfare systems and such. These comprise 35-55% of national GDPs in most of fully developed European economies. You can't promise literacy for all to Germany. German's are literate and schools are free. A chicken in every sunday pot and fresh bread and milk for your breakfast. Those are things that Franco or Lenin promised to the common man. They don't move the needle any more.
We have institutional problems of big old and sometimes very clunky organizations. If your ask the institutions, they would like those problems solved painlessly with money. Pay teachers 2014 upper middle class salaries & 1970s pensions. Decrease class sizes and increase hours. Take care of the elderly financially then physically throughout their 30 year retirement. Do this in a way that does not burden the family. 12 month paid maternity leave. Fraternity leave. Unlimited medical care. Transportation with 2014 technology, 1970s labour ideals and 1950s prices.
Those are some serious demands. In many cases impractical. A state cannot usually bear this burden financially. Even if it can, it needs to be achieved through effectiveness.
What's needed/possible is reform, improvement, good operational governance of these enormous machines. That's unsexy. It involves long timescales and painful inch-at-a-time improvements.
Revolutionary dissidence is sexy. Political entrepreneurs do sexy.
They promise to tax the rich or corporations, something they would be doing already if they could. They might promise to alleviate the problems really sucking the money out of schools and hospitals, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, the EU or somesuch. ATM, they don't even have to worry about implementation as they are not going to govern in the near future.
So things muddle along and will continue to do so, I don't yet see how or where it will change. It seems to me large parts of europe will have a lost decade.
Corruption. A lot. Spanish situation is kafkaesque right now. The former treasurer of the governing party is in jail. The prime minister sent him a SMS telling him "to be strong" when he was sent to prison. PM and rest of ministers were paid substantial extra from the construction companies briberies. No, they haven't resigned in two years. Only the scapegoat is canned.
Then similar scandals have arisen for the PSOE, former party in power until 2008, and CiU, the party that is promoting secession of Cataluña.
This week we have the phantom card show: bankers and politicians (politicians and union leaders are in the board of credit unions) using an opaque cards to spend 15.5 millions euros without paying any taxes.
Response from PP and PSOE has been very very very weak. They've lost credibility like... forever.
Populism as opposed to what? To the current ruling party, who has met exactly 0% of their electoral promises, who promised 4M jobs in their four-year term and has created approximately zero in three years, who promised not to cut spending on healthcare and education and has made tremendous cuts?
Or maybe as opposed to the main party of the opposition, who promised zero unemployment and brought employment up to 25%, and who denied that there was a crisis at all in the 2008 election campaign in spite of knowing perfectly (as anyone educated and informed knew) that the bubble was bursting?
It's very funny how people label Podemos as "populist" as if they had brought populism to Spain. Yes, Podemos is certainly populist... but no more than the two main parties and other not-so-main ones.
A lot has to happen before Occupy fizzles out around here.
Fizzle != Violently repressed:
They say about themselves that "they're not really a Party but a tool for disrupting politics" and I think this is quite accurate... they've gone from 0 to front-runner in 5 months.
As a pirate, I'm happy to see other parties using our tools and I'm also glad to have somebody disrupting our political landscape but pirates are also "a tool for disrupting". We just disrupted it sharing our experience and favorite tools! :)
There is no political Left in Europe. Podemos is not a leftist party, since no leftist party or democratic conservative party would ever get paid by the State and be part of it (like the Nazi party). It's a contradiction in terms and something that simply cannot be.
Most of the people don't know the distinction between formal democracy and real(social) democracy and this causes great confusion.
Formal democracy is not about the content of laws (eg: laws to protect Human Rights), but about the rules that define the democratic game, rules that ensure that the People is in charge at all times (constitutional liberty). Real democracy is about the content and this explains why it is prone to have an ideological battle.
The most important requirements are:
1.- Representativeness: not possible in Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Portugal among others, since they use the proportional list system.
2.- Separation of powers: not happening in Spain. The most voted political party in the legislative elections forms government.
3.- Imperative mandate: Sieyes abolished it during the French Revolution and it still to be restored in all Europe. The elected candidates in the legislative elections should remain loyal to their promises.
4.- Different elections: for executive and legislative (like in France)
Podemos doesn't care about any of these things as far as I concern.
In my modest view there is no possible reform, the problem is not the people in charge (Podemos guys seem honest), but the actual political system that doesn't fulfill any of the requirements. We haven't conquered our Liberty yet.
The two most powerful countries with non-figurehead executives (France and the United States) are perpetually beset with bickering and internal fighting instead of "checks and balances". Is a system with government shutdowns like we saw last year in the US, or François Hollands troubles in France any better than a system where all the power is held by the legislature and the prime minister? I only see a president as a sort of dictator who holds for 4 or 5 years the view of the electorate at one point in time, as opposed to a legislature who are always looking at future elections.
That's not so much a problem of a Presidential system as a problem of the a Presidential system in a country which also has a poorly-representative electoral system in general (particularly for the national legislature).
However, there aren't a lot of systems that have electoral systems that produce effective representation and Presidential systems in the same place.
The Montesquieu proposal is the best mechanism that we have to avoid institutional corruption. If the power is held only by one group (legislators) corruption is inevitable.
If you only care about the output then Plato was right and the best system would be an aristocracy that cares and chooses the best for the country.
That very much depends on which country you look at. For example, in NL we have the SP, in Germany 'Die Linke'. There are probably many like that in other countries as well.
I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Are you talking about undue importance given to small parties in such systems?
> Separation of powers: not happening in Spain. The most voted political party in the legislative elections forms government.
That's not how separation of power works...
> Imperative mandate: Sieyes abolished it during the French Revolution and it still to be restored in all Europe. The elected candidates in the legislative elections should remain loyal to their promises.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "imperative mandate". As for promises... well, there are promises and there is political expediency.
> Different elections: for executive and legislative (like in France)
I'm stopping you right here. It makes very little difference in practice, since the elections for the lower chamber happen right after the presidential elections. I also don't see how it's a benefit in general. It suffers from the idiotic, anti-democratic first-past-the-post system. I'd rather have a token President and a PM coming from a coalition instead.
> I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Are you talking about undue importance given to small parties in such systems?
No. The proportional list system prevents representativeness. The people whose name is on the list represent the one that put them on it. They do not represent the electors.
> Separation of powers: not happening in Spain. The most voted political party in the legislative elections forms government.
> That's not how separation of power works...
Exactly. I was explaining what happens in Spain.
> Imperative mandate: Sieyes abolished it during the French Revolution and it still to be restored in all Europe. The elected candidates in the legislative elections should remain loyal to their promises.
> I'm also not sure what you mean by "imperative mandate". As for promises... well, there are promises and there is political expediency.
The electors should have a contract with their representative and if they are not loyal to that contract they can be ceased.
> Different elections: for executive and legislative (like in France)
> I'm stopping you right here. It makes very little difference in practice, since the elections for the lower chamber happen right after the presidential elections. I also don't see how it's a benefit in general. It suffers from the idiotic, anti-democratic first-past-the-post system. I'd rather have a token President and a PM coming from a coalition instead.
It makes sense if you think about the different characteristics that you look for in a legislator in contrast to the values required to be a president. A legislator should be loyal to their representatives (a part) whereas what you are looking in a governor is intelligence to guide the Nation (all). It is nonsense to think that a good legislator could be a good PM (UK). Loyalty vs intelligence, that's why it should be different elections.
Then I'm not sure what you mean. That you don't like standard representational democracy, whereby voters grant power to politicians for a limited timeframe but cannot control directly what they do during this time?
> > Separation of powers: not happening in Spain. The most voted political party in the legislative elections forms government.
> > That's not how separation of power works...
> Exactly. I was explaining what happens in Spain.
That's the same thing elsewhere. What do you expect to see instead? > The electors should have a contract with their representative and if they are not loyal to that contract they can be ceased.
That's definitely an idea, though it seems tricky to put in place.
> It makes sense if you think about the different characteristics that you look for in a legislator in contrast to the values required to be a president. A legislator should be loyal to their representatives (a part) whereas what you are looking in a governor is intelligence to guide the Nation (all). It is nonsense to think that a good legislator could be a good PM (UK). Loyalty vs intelligence, that's why it should be different elections.
I expect that legislator look to their conscience first (if they can find it...) and to their party second. I also contest the underlying idea that an election campaign is a test of intelligence.
I'm going to focus on this one. Most european so-called democracies lack representation of the elector, and we can thank the proportional list system for this.
This lack of representation, in combination with the imperative mandate to the party instead of to the electors in Spain causes that we have, lets say, 150 legislators from party X, 75 from party Y, and 30 from party Z. The leader of the X party is going to be PM, which means it's going to execute the law. Law that he is going to decide(his legislators that he did put on the list).
In the spanish system we can get rid of the Parliament and the system wouldn't be affected, I'll prove it to you.
When the leader of party X votes Yes to one proposal, all of the X representatives vote always in the same direction. The same happens with the opposition. What this means is that we can get rid of all the legislators apart from the leader of X, Y and Z. The vote of X leader would value 150, vote of leader Y 75 and so on, and both us and the system wouldn't notice.
We don't need almost 500 representatives of their respectives leaders because their leaders are already present. There is no need to represent someone who is present, right?
A majority system where you can choose directly your MP would be way better to achieve representation. Why voting a list? Why not elect one representative for an area of about 100k citizen?
That way you do know who is your representative, in the list system (even in the open list) who is your representative? All of them?
What? I feel much more represented by a list of people that share my ideas and projects for the country, than by whomever the majority of people in my city chose among some candidates from the city.
What's not democratic is first-past-the-post systems, where if in my city 30% of the people vote for candidate A, 25% for B, 25% for C and 20% for D, only 30% of the people get a representative and the rest of the votes go directly to the trash bin.
If anything the problem with the Spanish electoral law is that it's not purely proporcional, it has districts which doesn't make any sense.
> What's not democratic is first-past-the-post systems, where if in my city 30% of the people vote for candidate A, 25% for B, 25% for C and 20% for D, only 30% of the people get a representative and the rest of the votes go directly to the trash bin.
This doesn't happen in a two-round majority system.
Podemos can use State power to improve things(social justice) but that is a totalitarian way of doing things.