A State Crisis and not a Party Crisis

The Socialist Party sense of political ease will never entirely survive the lurch into a new third referendum in Spain. That was the result of the wild debate which took place a grim Saturday for PSOE, the Socialist party, after a bruising chaotic battle against other senior party members who were opposed to prolonging the deadlock in Spanish politics.

That is what we can pick up from newspapers, but the problem never mentioned underlying is much deeper. In Spain, there are no primaries: they just do not exist. Without primaries, the political system is not a democracy: it can be something else, but not a democracy. Call it partitocracy, for instance. In a partitocracy, political parties are a part of the State, so when any of the big political parties faces a seriously severe crisis, the State faces a crisis too. We are talking about a major State crisis here.

Socialists ousted their leader in a bid to end the deadlock in forming a new government by their counterpart right party after two general votings. I do not call them general elections because Spaniards have no opportunity to elect nobody. The parties give the names of the nominees in the ballots, and there is no way that a voter can elect anybody. That is the reason why it is a partitocracy and not a democracy.

The State supports both parties and politicians whether a citizen likes them or not. So politicians are but mere civil servants working for the State; which does not necessarily means they should be woking for the benefit of the citizen. In fact, they owe their devotion to the party leader. And the same goes for Trade Unions and so on. That was the reason why the real issue at stake here was a State crisis more than a minor party crisis.Vicente Jiménez