Merkel in La Moncloa

Just under four years ago, nobody heard Zapatero promising cutbacks or austerity, and it is far from clear that Spain's Socialist leader knew what a country's risk premium was. Well, who did? Oh, yeah, those guys knew - you know, the ones who are running the show.

 

No, in March 2008 the impeccably third-way government in Madrid had done its homework, running a budget surplus and still being able to give away baby bonds and implement other more meaningful measures to augment Spain's patchy welfare state. There seemed to be a clear choice when the then-unfashionably austere televised debates (why can't a real TV journalist do it instead of the venerable president of the Television Academy?) took place between Zapatero and the Popular Party's Rajoy: market-based social democracy against unabashed neoliberalism. Zapatero won again and then we all woke up.

 

This time around, many Spaniards must feel a little foolish choosing between Zapatero's Socialist successor Rubalcaba or third-time-lucky Rajoy. Couldn't one just cut out the middle man and vote directly for Merkel, Murdoch or the CEO of Moody's? While Spain has so far avoided a bailout, this was only achieved by Zapatero's disturbingly dramatic conversion to market orthodoxy in May of last year, when his government's Keynesian knee-jerk was converted overnight into a sycophantic promise to square the state's sums by carving away at public employees' salaries, pensions and even the flagship Equality Ministry, binned to save a pittance. So what choice do voters have this time? No wonder the PP is way in the lead; in this environment, isn't it better to send someone who has always liked markets to go and do battle with the men in suits?

 

Earlier this year in Portugal, the center-right Social Democratic Party (PSD) came to power... (wrong expression) ...won the right to administrate the IMF-dictated budget after a European Union-arranged bailout that the same party had helped to bring about. As opposition leader, Pedro Passos Coelho refused to back Socialist PM Sócrates' austerity package which was to shave 4.5 percent off GDP over three years. Sócrates resigned, there was a run on Portugal's downgraded sovereign debt, and before the election was held in early June a 78-billion-euro bailout package was agreed to by Lisbon, Brussels and Washington. Passos Coelho emerged as the "victor" with a glorious mandate to captain the wreck that is the Portuguese economy as it is towed along by the masters of international capital.

 

In last month's 2012 budget proposal, Passos Coelho's government announced that the imperative of meeting externally imposed deficit-reduction targets means that GDP will shrink by 2.8 percent next year. So what has the ousting of Sócrates amounted to for the electorate? If within this legislature the EU/IMF medicine actually starts to work for the Portuguese, rather than just in the interests of the euro-zone leaders, he can take credit for it. If not, Passos Coelho will no doubt blame the mess he inherited - except that he helped to engineer the crisis. 

 

As in Spain today, there was no real choice; the policy path had already been laid down. To be fair, Rajoy has not played so foully for the crown. True, he refused to vote in favor of a pension freeze and civil service pay cuts, measures which he would be perfectly sanguine about implementing in the same circumstances. But Zapatero relied on Catalan and Basque nationalists to force down such bitter pills in his stubborn rearguard fight against outside intervention. It is a battle no one could have expected ZP, the champion of gay marriage and ministerial gender equality, to wage with such determination; to his credit, it seems that Spain will reach November 20 without the need for an external rescue package. But it has ripped the heart out of the Socialists to the extent that not even the skillful hands of Rubalcaba will be able to beautify the party's electoral cadaver.

 

Outside the parliaments in Lisbon and Madrid, the words "não" and "no" are ringing in the ears of representatives that the protestors say no longer represent the people. Here, in the cooperative spirit of collectivized camp-outs and open debates, there is the germ of a new politic, far from Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington. What began in Madrid's Sol is now occupying Wall Street. How many more non-elections like the one in Spain this month will pass by before these new voices gain representation?   

Photographs by Uly Martín and Armando Franca (AP)

Comments

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I'm just always hoping there's going to be a breakthrough. Every time they meet, I hope they're getting close." With so many meetings ending in heartbreak, does he still muster hope every time? "I just patch my heart up," he says, "and hope that it doesn't get broken again. I'm going on the ride with them the whole way." Martin's comments have made him the most prominent player to openly plea for a quick deal.

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Shout Isaac a beer, Jimmy, he's got himself enough brownie points now...

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this write up, is the most right news of the hour, i like to thank the writer , james badcock, you did a very nice presentation of facts, thanks for keeping us informed. keep it up, bravo!!!!!