Underwritten and Undermined

The independence of Amnesty International is founded on funding: Amnesty doesn't accept grants or subsidies of any kind from any public source. International PEN, the world's oldest human rights organisation, is also dependent on its membership and on donors. Writers support writers (and PEN staff, presumably) in their efforts to defend the rights of other writers.

Spanish trade unions, like many of their European counterparts, do not rely on their members: they rely on the State, to the tune of sixteen million euros in 2009. Such generic funding is only part of the picture, as unions qualify for funding under a wide range of programmes for their work in research, training, and development. Yet fewer than one fifth of workers belong to unions, so it's difficult to know whose interests are being defended. Workers lucky enough to have been signed to open-ended contracts (which bind worker and employer until the former's retirement) are difficult and very expensive to dismiss. Other workers may have limited social rights, even in the public sector. I know public university staff who taught for ten years under administrative contracts that did not entitle them to unemployment benefits if they had lost their jobs. Their unions made little noise about the issue and no-one went on strike.

Labour reform would mean stripping the most privileged workers of some of their privileges. Yet, if carried out justly, it would also mean improving the lot of those workers who are, in all but name, second-class citizens.  For the time being, the unions have responded to the civil service wage cut by calling for a general strike. The state will be funding a strike against the state as Spain floats on the edge of a maelstrom of insolvency. So be it. What's worth asking is whether public funding of unions has mad them less accountable to workers for the simple reason that they do not need union dues to operate. They are part of the system, paid to play the part they play in collective bargaining and thus make collective agreements possible. Collective bargaining is a right; it is also a necessity for the state, as it simplifies labour law incalculably. When union leaders refer to civil servants whose contracts are iron-clad as "the weakest" members of a society where one worker out of five is unemployed, something other than class interest is at play.

Trust

Trust is not a feature of arbitrary power. Obedience, coercion, intimidation, indoctrination, and force underwrite the absence of fixed rules, the fluidity of rules. The rule of law means arbiters--judges--and entails trust in those arbiters. As civil society matures, the sources of trust--individuals, groups and institutions who may be relied upon to act independently of state coercion--grow in number and influence, facilitating public scrutiny of the exercise of power.

Whatever trust was generated during Spain's transition to democracy is eroding. Here's proof: Hacienda confirma la financiación ilegal del PP valenciano, que responde con una querella. For those with no Spanish, a political party is suing the revenue service--the tax man--over incriminating documentation. In a country where the revenue service and the judiciary are accused of playing party political games, the rule of law is compromised and democracy under threat.

"In a democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve"

A bit of counterfactual history: it is 1980, and the Parti Québécois has called a non-binding referendum on Québec's place in or out of the Canadian confederation. Here are the options:

(1) Sovereignty-association (i.e. an independent Québec in a currency union with Canada)

(2) Unencumbered independence (i.e. no currency union)

(3) The status quo

This differs only in one respect from the historical referendum: Option 2 was not on offer. Still, let's imagine that the referendum--which was purely consultative--featured three options, but was conducted under the historical rules. Therefore:

-under the supervision of the chief electoral officer, three committees would have been formed;

-each of the committees would have received equal public funding to conduct its campaign

-total expenditure for each of the committees would have been capped

-equal time for each of the committees would be allotted by broadcaster

-the only other campaign permitted, that of the electoral authorities to explain the purpose and workings of the referendum--that is, the institutional campaign--would have likewise strictly allotted equal space to all three options

The most important outcome of the referendum would have been the same, whatever the number of votes tallied by the three options: the political process was accepted, the vote clean, and the convener--René Lévesque--lost none of the respect he had always received from his political opponents.

This week's Barcelona plebiscite offers none of the guarantees of the 1980 Québec referendum. In response to criticisms that the process was skewed from the outset and money being wasted (it's now clear that €1.3 million was spent on political pantomime, the state disguised as civil society), city hall took out a full page advertisement in Saturday's La Vanguardia, according to which such criticisms are tantamount to "an unacceptable questioning" of the body charged with oversight:

No-one seems to have objected to dissent being labelled "unacceptable". Then again, as Adlai Stevenson is said to have said, "In a democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve."

Not With a Bang, But a Whimper (Guided Democracy II)

This will be an update to my last post, on the quality of the democratic process in an upcoming referendum on plans to alter the design of one of Barcelona's main cross-city thoroughfares. Last Sunday La Vanguardia published a 20-page special section under its masthead, as part of the paper rather than an insert. It's not clear who paid for it. The lead article is the writer's first professional byline in the paper; the tone is not that of a reporter, but a propagandist. Here, in translation, is an example of that tone, from the opening paragraph:

"The urban renewal of Avinguda Diagonal is not a whim or matter to be taken lightly, but a necessity, for the avenue is polluted, often congested, and falls short of the needs of Barcelona in the twenty-first century."

Voters have three choices in the plebiscite: the third--Option C--is to reject either of the plans for renewal. That option is described as "inmovilista," resistance to change.

Page two of the supplement features an article signed by the mayor; a two-page spread denounces the avenue as "over-crowded" and "agressive"; diagrammes of re-designed intersections are labelled "Option A," "Option B" and "Current Situation," as though Option C were not an option; the back page is a guide to voting.

If this is, as it appear, a publication commissioned by public authorities, it represents the utter decadence of liberal democratic culture in Spain. Information on the formalities of the voting process is mixed with editorialising by a branch of the state which is openly attempting to shape choices to be made by citizens in a public plebiscite, and hiding its own role in making that attempt; and

Guided Democracy

One of Barcelona's grand avenues is looking a bit shabby and smelling a bit nasty. Avinguda Diagonal, choked by up to eight lanes of traffic, needs a make-over, and the mayor and council have decided to submit the matter to citizens in a non-binding referendum. In a referendum process, as in any electoral process, the state is supposed to be neutral. The state handles logistics; parties and civil society campaign, and citizens vote. Not so in Barcelona: we can vote three ways, but public money is being spent to publicise only two of the options, while the third goes unmentioned or is hushed up. A flashy website (http://www.bcn.cat/diagonal/) does its flash for Option A and Option B; city hall's monthly mass-mailed glosses them; billboards on subway platforms illustrate them. Where is Option C?

City Hall is campaigning, not informing.

The campaign has a Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/ideadiagonal#p/a), a Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/IdeaDiagonal), and a blog (http://ideadiagonal.wordpress.com/). The campaign has an official documentary (http://www.bcn.cat/diagonal/46-passat-present-i-futur.html), available for viewing on the self-described "official page of the street". The documentary lacks proper production credits. Who paid for it? Who produced it? I couldn't say. The production values match the quality of the prose on the campaign's web page: they are what you'd expect, derivative, hackneyed, and not very good. Option C must be lost on the editing room floor. Perhaps we'll see it in the director's cut, after we've voted.

No, We Don't

The Madrid public school authorities have set bilingual programmes in place all over the province. They are advertising the programmes in print media, on television and on the radio, and on public transport. A few examples:

Spanish and foreign media have noticed that the campaign is flogging bad grammar--reinforcing a mistake often made by learners of the English language. Has the campaign been dropped? Corrected? Has anyone apologised or admitted the mistake? No. The English may be bad, say the campaign's defenders, but that doesn't matter: the slogan is effective. Who knows if it is? It's now notorious, at least in Madrid. But the decision to run the ads, once taken, couldn't be reversed. To do so would mean admitting that someone had made a mistake, and no-one in Spain ever makes such an admission about policies or how they are implemented.

Show Me the Money

A friend who shall go nameless (old joke coming) but whose initials are David Brock (end of old joke) showed me this piece in Saturday's El País. The reporting is not very good. Still, one datum is worth pursuing: CiU paid a direct marketing firm nearly 150,000 euros for mass mailings. (It's not clear when or to how many homes.) A market price for the same service would be about 4000 euros, says El País's Pere Ríos. (His source for the figure or model for reckoning it isn't clear either.) It does seem like a lot of money for a small party. Grants to parties came to over 81 million euros in 2009, of which CiU got less than 2.5 million. If CiU falls into the general pattern of 80% state financing, its total income for 2009 should be about 3.1 million euros, of which the money spent on direct mailing would be 4.8%--a lot for rubbish. But there may be a catch: in election years, most parties are entitled to a per-voter grant which specifically underwrites these kinds of mass mailings, up to 21 euro-cents per voter. There are over 35 million electors in Spain, over 5 million in Catalunya. The latter figure would give CiU over 1 million to spend on mass mailings in a general elections year. Whether that approximates the real cost is another matter. The real issue is this: if parties are funded as though they were state utilities, why are they audited to see that this money is well spent? I haven't found annual reports or auditors' reports on any party web page. What I have found is the logo for a state infrastructure spending stimulus package on the PSOE website (on this page; look for the Plan E logo and link) and the Transparency International index for 2009. Spain is the 32nd most corrupt country on Earth. Not bad, but not good.