Newcomers, Parties, and Bad Faith

A recent post took up the representation of newcomers under Spain's electoral system, which circumscribes d'Hondt method proportional representation to Spanish provinces for general elections and those held in autonomous communities, thus dividing the polity--however imperfectly--into smaller units. The same system obtains in local elections, without the subdivision of the territory voting on its governance. I argued that this system will ensure the under-representation of immigrants are party slates are drawn up with an eye to go unnoticed, save the first two or three spots. Catalan demographics are such that a viable immigrant candidacy might--and this has not been tested--do a slate more electoral damage than good. As immigrant-dominated neighbourhoods have no voice per se, everything about them--income, language, religion, newness of population, education--is swallowed up by the municipality as a whole. It's low-resolution local politics: constituencies are ostensibly ideological, though in practice they are social networks bestowing favours to   bind voters to their brands.

In this post, I'd like to argue that the PSC has acted in bad faith in soliciting the votes of newcomers. At issue is the following poster, which I noticed the other day at a call centre on Ronda de Sant Antoni:

Columbian-born Erika Torregrossa was thirtieth on a list of forty-one candidates. For her to have been elected, the PSC would have had to garner something approaching 75% of the vote, yet no party has ever won more than 45.2% of the vote and no party is ever likely to take 75% in a party system as fragmented as that obtaining here (or, indeed, in any democratic polity). The slogan is disingenuous. Ms Torregrossa was run in the equivalent--in a first past the post system--of an opposing party's safe seat. A vote for Mr Hereu was not a vote for a Latin American city councillor. Had Ms Torregrossa been given the fifth or tenth slot on the slate, it would have been: but Mr Hereu drew up the slate, and Mr Hereu consigned Ms Torregrossa to losing. By paying mere lip-service to pluralism and the political representation of newcomers, did Mr Hereu act cynically? Has he bettered or worsened the lot of immigrants as politically active citizens? Is he better or worse, in this respect, than the new mayor of Badalona, Mr. Xavier Garcia Albiol. Mr Hereu would say that he meant well: but did he act well?

My second objection is to the exclusive use of Spanish on the poster. A Catalan text may or may not have been understood by the constituency the PSC wanted to win over (such things depend on lexical choices). A bilingual poster would have better express the party's policy that Catalan should be the shared medium of civic life in Catalonia. Excluding it from the poster contradicts that policy.

My third objection arises from a coincidence: both El Mundo and El Economista  refer to Ms Torregrossa as one three candidates who constitute "la representación de las personas inmigradas". The stories were syndicated by different press agencies; overlapping phrases (of which there are many) point to copy from a party press release.  Yet the last of Mr. Hereu's candidates was another immigrant, the Sussex-born architect David Mackay. If the party's press release did refer to immigrants on the party's slate and disassociated one immigrant from the rest, double standards are in operation. The PSC is not alone in this respect.  But more about the peculiar status of some immigrants in Catalan society in another post.