The week that was

Join the PP - get your discounts!

The British Conservative Party operates an affinity programme for its members. Included in this programme are discounts on purchases from the Early Learning Centre, Mothercare and Blackwells book stores as well as on holidays through Cottages4you. An incentive scheme such as this isn’t uncommon, and nor is it uncommon in Majorca, except among political parties.
In February, the Partido Popular in the Balearics launched a discount card for its members. Called the “Targeta Blava” (the blue card), some 300 businesses across the islands were signed up to the scheme initially. In the space of only two months, these 300 businesses have risen to 700. It is a scheme which seems to have been successful, and so there are those who are not happy with it. And who do you think they are?
Last week, the Més leftist grouping raised a motion for Palma’s councillors to consider. It didn’t want Palma City Council to sign any contracts with businesses which are part of the scheme. It has already brought the same motion before the Balearic parliament and the Council of Majorca. The Palma proposal, supported by PSOE, was defeated; the PP has a clear majority.
Més and PSOE object to the discount card on the grounds that it is a form of indirect donation, that it may well be illegal and that it discredits politics. The PP rejects any claim that it is illegal, and its number two in Palma, Álvaro Gijón, reckoned that the idea for the card proved that the PP was simply smarter than other parties who don’t have one.
Sadly for the opposition parties, Gijón is almost certainly right. The PP often is smarter when it comes to party organisation. It has more than 22,000 members in the Balearics; PSOE has just over 2,500 paid-up card carriers (but not discount card carriers). The PP is a well-oiled machine (as well oiled as things can be in the typically shambolic Balearics political scene) by comparison with other parties. This organisation was just one reason why it secured the crushing electoral victory that it did in 2011.
Undeterred by the smarter-than-the-average-political-party-bear jibe, the left continued to argue against the card, believing that businesses may have been, how can one put it, persuaded that it was in their interests to join the scheme. The 100%-plus increase in only two months is a pretty substantial increase, it must be said. They have all joined voluntarily, responded Gijón, who was having nothing of any allegations of coercion.
Anyway, for anyone eligible of becoming a member of the PP, it might be worth giving membership some serious consideration. If there are all these businesses knocking around offering discounts, it could be worth it, and it wouldn’t actually mean voting for the PP. It would be advisable to register a vote, just to make sure, but they’d never know if the vote was for Més or PSOE instead. Would they?

Hiding the costs

Obscurantism has been one of the words of the week. It’s not a word that trips off the tongue in English, Spanish or Catalan, but it was doing a good deal of tripping-off in parliament last week because PSOE wanted to know about President Bauzá’s trips, and one in particular - that to California last year when he joined the Asturians (Felipe and Letizia) in paying homage to Father Junipero Serra. The government was accused of obscurantism, i.e. deliberately hiding the costs of the trip. The opposition wanted to know, among other things, what the various others who went to California got up to while they were there.
It’s fair enough to wish to hold the government to account, and if vice-president Gómez is being repeatedly evasive in answering questions directly in respect of presidential trips (which is an accusation levelled at him), then the opposition is right to pursue the matter. However, there is a certain element of pot and kettle about all this. Some of you may just recall a little jolly that the last PSOE-led administration organised to Brussels back in 2009. The purpose of the trip was to lobby against the EU’s directive on pyrotechnics, which threatened - so it was misguidedly thought - to affect the local demons’ fire-runs at fiesta times. The total number of government persons, mayors, union representatives, performers and God knows who else who swanned off to Brussels was 150. Did we ever get to the bottom of how much that little exercise cost? One which turned out to be totally unnecessary as the EU had pretty much already said that the directive would not harm traditions.
In these more accountable times, it is reasonable to ask for full disclosure of the cost of foreign trips (or indeed trips to other parts of Spain), but at times the opposition appears desperate to try and lay some charge at Bauzá’s door and ends up looking as though it is clutching at straws.

Joana and the working class - part two

Someone else who has been off on a trip is the regional headmistress. Joana Camps headed off to Madrid last week for a meeting presided over by national education and culture minister José Ignacio Wert. There was a rather splendid photo of the gathering with Joana looking towards camera and some chap opposite who was smiling to the point of laughing. It must have been a good joke, whatever it was. It’s never a dull week with Joana, and having earlier this month suggested that trilingual teaching was going to delight the working classes, she was on the class trail again this week. In fact, she was being taken to task over that previous statement and the implication that the lot of the great unwashed would be greatly improved by struggling to learn maths in English. “The working class voted for the PP,” she announced. “A party cannot gain an absolute majority” without the support of the proletariat (she didn’t actually use that word). She was undoubtedly right in this electoral analysis, and the working class might yet vote again for the PP. Not because they are in love with trilingual teaching but because they have a nice discount card, available at some 700 businesses across the islands. I wonder if any of these businesses offer discounts on textbooks in English.