Políticos

It is unfortunate that Spanish politics remind me of American politics. The national presidential election will be on March 9th, in a system where there are basically two leading political parties since after the military dictatorship of Francisco Franco ended in 1975 because of his death. Now there is an important distinction between the US position of president and the Spanish president - the US president is the head of state and head of government 'directly elected' (although not really, electoral college and all that) by the people who leads the executive branch of the government and does not participate in the work of the legislature apart from approving or vetoing bills. The Spanish president is not actually a president at all, he is the Prime minister (very similar to the UK) under a constitutional monarchy and so is not really directly elected. Representatives into the legislature are elected, and the majority of representatives elects among themselves a leader - this would be the Prime Minister. In Spain there is the formality of having to propose this PM to the King (currently Juan Carlos I), but essentially the president of Spain is actually the party leader representative of the majority party in the legislature. This, I believe makes for a more interactive leader that participates more in the process and is more responsible to the other representatives and definitely more responsible to the pointed harassment of the opposition party.
ANYWAYS - there have been debates and there is an advertising war between the leaders of the PP (Partido Popular=Popular Party, conservative group - leader is Mariano Rajoy) and PSOE (Partido Socialisto de Obreros Españoles= Spanish Workers' Socialist Party, currently in power liberal party - leader is José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero) parties. The posters have pictures of either Zapatero or Rajoy and all the say are things like 'Somos Más'='We're More', 'Con Cabeza y Corazón'='With Head and Heart', 'No Es Lo Mismo'='It´s Not the Same'. So basically they are points of propoganda, not telling us anything at all about the parties or their positions or the leadership ability of either candidate. Although I think that there is a similar case in the US - people are expected to already know who they like and the rest is just dispersing the name. Why can´t we have real debates about the virtues of either kinds of policy or the reasonings behind the histories of their party and how they could ensure a difference in the future. As John Stewart pointed out during his butt-kicking appearance on Crossfire, debates would be incredible opportunities to really discuss the important points of either side - eventually agreements to disagree on certain points would be reached - perhaps on the matters of faith and priorities, but just for the fact that reasonable conversation could take place would be wonderful - but it never happens that way. The debates between Zapatero and Rajoy have been based on small rather unimportant points instead of real solutions to large problems or realizations of the true nature of individual issues for example immigration. They began by naming the real issue - can we stop the flow or do we just have to start naturalizing a lot of the people? The real answer of course is that naturalization is the only sane and possible solution, but they began nitpicking in the details of what has been done in the past by either side and the actual numbers of who was where. It doesn´t matter! They´re here, what do you do now? It´s just sad that in such serious matters as the election of a head of government, they have to play stupid argument games like that.

Just as unfortunate is the method of campaign in the US - a battle of arguments instead of debates and meaningless propoganda campaigns. At least it seems reasonably clear to me that there will be a Democratic president next, if America can just make up its mind which Democrat it will be. I wish I knew more details but from what I´ve heard I agree more with the less agressive and fiesty positions of Barack Obama - I think the US could use a healer not another fighter. But what does that mean? Who knows, the Democratic candidate will be elected before I even return to the US so it doesn´t matter.