Election Special - Part Four Perpetuation Of The "Casta"

José Ramón Bauzá - Partido Popular

Bauza might just have been a very good president. Look what he was faced with. A basket-case economy, an unsustainable deficit, a tourism industry in need of revitalisation. Credit where it is due. The economy is re-emerging, the deficit is under better control, investment in tourism has been soaring. But doubts linger. Is employment still only seasonal, precarious and underpaid? Has tourism been a blank cheque for the hoteliers and they alone?
Still, if these were the only doubts, then he would deserve to stand again with a solid reputation behind him. But the possibility of the PP winning its lowest ever number of seats in any Balearic election points not to goodness but to disappointment, and it is one of his own doing. Governments pursue numerous policies, but there are policies which are wiser than others; Bauzá has not always chosen wisely.
He has sought to modernise and reform, something else for which he deserves credit, but modernisation of his own party has come at a cost. It can seem strange that PP mayors, who were facing possible legal action for alleged corruption, can take such issue with his ethical code that disqualifies them from being candidates, but this opposition from mayors in Majorca’s villages and towns has only thinly disguised the deeper reasons for discontent within the party: policies on education and language, attitudes to regionalism and Bauzá himself. His principal lack of wisdom was displayed over trilingual teaching, a battle that he appeared intent on having with unions, teachers, opposition parties and many within the PP. Linguistic sentiment, cultural sentiment, regional sentiment - all evident with PP administrations of the past - were being abandoned: it can be hard to modernise traditional sentiment, especially that among those who voted for you and who had backed you as leader.
Even all this might have been palatable had it not been for a style that makes him difficult to warm to. After poor results at last year’s European elections, he promised greater humility. There has been no evidence of it, and it would seem that he even allowed a far-from-humble ego to intrude with seeking the purging of a rival who was very much more likable and popular - Palma’s Mateo Isern. He has alienated or removed those who were able but prepared to argue with him, like Isern, Rafael Bosch at education or Antoni Pastor in Manacor, none of them from a PP old guard which itself had grown increasingly disenchanted.  
The PP has not been immune to the rise of the alternative parties. Surprising it might seem, but Podemos has garnered support from PP voters, still exposed to the cloud of corruption which hangs over the PP, even if it is one of past administrations. Bauzá heads to the election promising jam for tomorrow - a better financing deal with Madrid, tax cuts, 40,000 jobs. The thing is he might well be able to deliver on all these, but do the people and his party want it to be him who does. He may well end up heading a minority government, but the knives could be out.
Latest opinion poll estimation: 22 to 25 seats.

Francina Armengol -PSOE/PSIB

Will the  Balearics have its first female president? It may do, though a great deal would depend upon what support would come to the aid of Francina Armengol and PSOE. Més would do, but would Podemos? Would it swallow its distaste for the “casta” two-party system of PSOE and the PP and actually get into governmental bed with one half of that system? If not president, then what about vice-president? It would have seemed unthinkable only a short time ago, but the possibility of a pact with the Partido Popular has been raised. Were there to be, Podemos and others would have their worst fears confirmed. The casta would be perpetuated.
PSOE - the PSIB initials refer to its Balearic organisation - should really be in a much stronger position than it is. Four years of PP government have witnessed an erosion of support for José Ramón Bauzá and his party, but just as with PSOE nationally, the regional party has been incapable of making any real progress. Memories of the last government, of economic crisis linger. Podemos and Ciudadanos have appeared. Rather than go forward, PSOE has gone backwards.
A point to bear in mind with PSOE is that it has never been that strong in the Balearics. When it led its first coalition government from 1999 to 2003, it did so with only 13 out of the 59 seats. It fared better in 2007 with 23, but it should be noted that on both occasions the PP fell just two seats short of a majority with 28 seats. The opinion polls ahead of Sunday’s election might actually indicate where it should be, but that would be letting Francina Armengol off the hook. PSOE has done little during the years of the Bauzá government to prove that it can regain trust lost because of crisis. It has done little to prove that it is deserving of government again.
Of course, a party in opposition can only do so much, but Armengol was supposedly going to renew PSOE, give it a new face and indeed some new faces. She hasn’t. And as for opposition, the greatest challenge to Bauzá has arguably come from within his own party. PSOE’s attacks on trilingual teaching and such like have been echoed from within the PP.
PSOE goes into the election with no great project to announce, with no great calamity to exploit of the type that Bauzá was able to in 2011. Its contribution to economic crisis might have been exaggerated, but there is no getting away from the fact that the last PSOE-led administration was loose with the cash. The electorate have not forgotten, and whether a recent lurch towards the left by Armengol will do anything to help is debatable. Why has she been doing that? Two words - Més, Podemos.
Armengol does have experience on her side in that she was the president of the Council of Majorca between 2007 and 2011, but then the Council was an easy spender. She will hope that a proposal for a grand pact on language and education, a free health card for all, social rights and economic diversification will convince the electorate.
Latest opinion poll estimation: 13 to 15 seats (out of a total of 59).