I'm using the widget designed by El País to display the results of tomorrow's elections in Cataluña. It is almost universally expected that the winner of the election will be Convergència i Unió (CiU), if they win they will return to power for the first time in 8 years. This follows two terms of the Tripartit coalition involving the PSC (Catalan section of the PSOE), Esquerra Republicana (ERC) and Iniciativa per Catalunya (ICV).
None of the Tripartit parties are expected to do very well compared to previous results, the PSC is suffering from the decline in support for the PSOE at national level as well as some disillusionment with what has been seen as the uninspiring leadership of Jose Montilla. ERC are also predicted to do very badly, they tried an unhappy balancing act between their nationalist aspirations and an alliance with non-nationalist parties. In the process their hopes of challenging CiU's supremacy in the nationalist vote have been dashed.
There will be some interest to see how well the new pro-independence platform headed by former Barcelona FC president Joan Laporta does. I don't like Laporta, not because he's pro-independence, but just because I suspect he is an unprincipled opportunist. I'm also glad if the attempt to use Barça's success on the field as a launching pad for a political career doesn't work - we get too much bread and circus style politics as it is.
The campaign has not been terribly gripping, the tension in the result will be over whether CiU can get a majority, and if not who they will negotiate with to be able to govern. Potential allies include the Partido Popular, who have run a nasty openly racist campaign in what may be an ugly sign of things to come when we get more elections in Spain next year. If such an agreement takes place nobody should be too surprised, nationalist issues apart CiU and the PP could find room for agreement on many issues.
Tom over at the thebadrash.com has done a more detailed analysis of the different parties standing. The results start coming in after 20:00 p.m. tomorrow, in the meantime the widget displays what happened last time around in 2006.
4 comments:
There are principled opportunists . . . ?
Mas is not the least demagogic politician in Spain, for that matter.
I could argue Colin, that an opportunist can just be someone who takes advantage of circumstances without necessarily acting in an unprincipled way. I wouldn't argue this in the context of the elections of course.
I agree in general, of course, Graeme. But politicians . . . anywhere?
Post a Comment