Thursday, April 24, 2008

What Are They Going To Do About Acebes?

We know that Mariano Rajoy is forming a new team to accompany him on his long march through the political wilderness. There is, however, still one significant piece of the puzzle missing. It is widely assumed that the current general secretary of the PP, Angel Acebes, is going to be replaced at some point by a new Rajoy appointee. So far, there has been no confirmation of this, and there seems to be an expectation that it may be announced at the PP congress in June when Rajoy hopes to get the support of his party.

The reasons for moving Acebes out of the way are fairly clear. Short of putting a huge flashing neon sign on top of the PP headquarters with the legend “lies, 11-m, manipulation” the next best thing is to allow Angel Acebes to be the public face of the party; such is his association with the attempt to spin the train bombings for electoral advantage. But the problem is that Acebes has one great virtue, at least from the PP point of view. He is tremendously loyal to the party, and can probably never be accused of putting his own interests above those of the PP. Given what is happening in his party at the moment that makes him almost unique.

All of this talk about “skipping a generation” and bringing younger faces to the party leadership is a little bit bogus, and the case of Acebes only emphasises this. Angel Acebes isn’t even 50 years old yet, which for a politician makes him relatively young. His shifty sidekick Eduardo Zaplana, who resigned his post before he could be booted out, is only 52; again hardly at retirement age. The generation that is being skipped is that which is associated with the disastrous last couple of years of Jose Maria Aznar’s government, regardless of how old they are they are tarnished by association with that period. There is of course still one exception to this rule (at least for the moment), the party leader himself.


6 comments:

moscow said...

Graeme,
I think you forget this is Spain. Times evolve and this time round things might be different, but since Franco's death, the generational change of the guard has always been swift, radical and unforgiving. This is in part because there was always a need to constantly change the furniture in a country that was mutating at breathless speed, and where 'middle-age' quickly became sinonimous with 'old'. Also, despite the low birth rate, Spain is still a relatively young country in European terms. Not for Spain 71 year old Berlusconi or McCain, and no Miterrand, Chirac, Kohl, Thatcher or other oldies that have trundled on the European political stage in the past. As I said, maybe things will be different now that Spain is also becoming 'older'. But don't bet on it. It depends on whether the Spanish society retains or not the penchant for 'change' it has shown to have during the last 33 years.

Graeme said...

I don't doubt what you say Moscow, my point was really that the change of generation in this case has less to do with age than it has to do with the image of the people involved. Both Rajoy and Aguirre, to take 2 random examples, are older than Acebes and Zaplana.

moscow said...

Aguirre will open the can of worms, she might even become the leader of the PP - temporarily - but neither she nor Rajoy stand a chance in hell of ever becoming presidenta/e. Mark my words.

Graeme said...

I hope you are right about that.

Anonymous said...

The "Blessed Margaret" was 54 when she came to power in 1979

Graeme said...

It's suddenly gone very cold around here. Must have been the mention of that name. Comparing the mad one to Aguirre, there are some similarities - Thatcher was completely underrated when she stood for the leadership, then look what happened.