Who Chose José Montilla? (continued)

Yesterday I began to examine the quality of the democratic processes that gave José Montilla his job as party leader. Today I'd like to examine Montilla's status as an elected official. Montilla is a career politician, a party man. He was first elected in 1979, in the first freely contested municipal election since the death of Franco, and has known no other profession. He never completed a university degree. He is a pure creature of party politics as practised in Spain since the late 1970s.

Montilla is a deputy in the Catalan parliament. He was not elected individually: he was part of a slate, a list, and voters had no opportunity to vote for individuals from various party lists. Montilla's party put forth eighty-five candidates for the eighty-five seats accorded to Barcelona, the most populous of Catalonia's four electoral districts. If voters should be dissatisfied with Mr Montilla's work as a deputy, as party leader, or as premier, there is no mechanism allowing them to direct that dissatisfaction at him directly. It's all or nothing: not voting for Montilla means not voting for the party, and the other eighty-four names on the list. In practice, this means that only his party--which he controls--can unseat him. As long as parties can gauge how many safe seats they have, the nominees at the top of the party list have nothing to worry about. They are accountable to the party for their jobs; if they please or run the party, they have jobs for life. So Mr Montilla, who is the general secretary of his party as well as premier is effectively accountable to himself alone, rather like God.