Discord Pushes Spain Into Fifth Month With No Government
By RAPHAEL MINDER

MADRID — Belgium famously sealed a dubious notoriety five years ago when it spent 589 days without an elected government. While Spain is not quite Belgium yet, it is getting there.

Spain has started its fifth month without a government, but it is very likely to spend six months or more in political limbo, many analysts now predict, as the Spaniards give the Flemings and Walloons a run for their money in the political discord category.

One word that seems to come up a lot these days when discussing politics is circo (or circus).

After an election in December produced no clear winner, scattering votes among the four main parties, those parties have failed to negotiate a governing coalition. As the politicians squabble incessantly, about the only consensus is that the country has entered uncharted waters.

Mariano Rajoy, the former prime minister, is clinging to his office as acting prime minister after turning down an offer from the king to form a government. His government ministers refuse to recognize the Parliament that resulted from the election or even deal with its lawmakers. The new Parliament has taken the government to court for not recognizing its legitimacy, while not recognizing the legitimacy of Mr. Rajoy, either.

That is where things stand.

It was not supposed to be this way. A new generation of party leaders had promised that the December vote would usher in a period of change and constitutional reform.

Instead, Spain is verging on constitutional crisis. The order of the day is institutional sclerosis, a lot of posturing and “generally a moment of great confusion,” said Rubén Amón, a columnist for El País, a Spanish newspaper.

“Politicians have given a very bad image in which all party leaders have put their own personal survival ahead of the general interest,” Mr. Amón said.

It is not as if public perceptions of the politicians could sink much lower in a country where virtually every party has been caught up in corruption scandals in recent years. But the nearly complete undermining of the public’s faith in its political institutions may be about the only thing achieved since the start of the year.

This month’s parliamentary debating was a case point. The session on April 6 was supposed to give lawmakers an opportunity to challenge Mr. Rajoy on why his government had backed a controversial European Union agreement to have Turkey take back unwanted refugees.

But humanitarian considerations quickly gave way to far more personal tensions between the leaders of Spain’s two emerging parties — Albert Rivera of Ciudadanos, or Citizens, and Pablo Iglesias of the far-left Podemos.

The two men, in their 30s, have presented themselves as a new generation of Spanish politician. But the new generation looked every bit like the old one, as they hurled accusations of cronyism.

It was part of what Luis María Anson, a veteran journalist, called “a depressing show” since the December election. Spanish politics, he argued in a recent column in the newspaper El Mundo, has become “a circus ring in which every day acrobatic leaders make ridiculous pirouettes to the stupefaction of citizens.”

Manuel de la Rocha Vázquez, an adviser to the Socialist party, suggested that the flamboyant sparring had become unavoidable in an era of round-the-clock news coverage.

“There is a lot of demand for information and statements, and politics turns into a big theater, with lots of news conferences and interviews but very little substance,” he said.

But while most lawmakers have tried to hog the news media’s attention, Mr. Rajoy and his acting government have been conspicuous in their absence, a pattern of aloofness that began even before the election, when the prime minister refused to debate most of his opponents.

Four of his ministers have refused to appear before parliamentary committees to defend recent decisions, arguing that an acting government need answer only to the Parliament that elected it, not a new assembly whose survival prospects are dim.

The last refusenik, José Manuel Soria, in any case was forced to resign as industry minister days later, after being linked to the Panama Papers and offshore business activities. Mr. Rajoy, in turn, has refused to discuss before lawmakers Mr. Soria’s demise.

Opposition politicians, predictably, have latched on to the government’s lack of accountability.

“The acting government must more than ever be subject to parliamentary control, because its legitimacy is diminished,” Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist leader, told Parliament recently. “An acting government isn’t a government out of control.”

Feeling shunned, the lawmakers voted this month to take the government to the Constitutional Court of Spain over its refusal to recognize them fully.

The paralysis is not without consequence. Important challenges loom.

The regional government in Catalonia is forging ahead with a plan to secede from Spain. And Brussels recently warned about Spain’s deteriorating public finances, after Madrid missed its 2015 deficit target.

The leadership vacuum has also translated into legal uncertainty, as opposition politicians have pledged to scrap several proposals introduced by Mr. Rajoy. These include educational and labor legislation, a new solar energy tax and a measure to restrict the right to stage public protests.

This week, King Felipe VI will hold a final round of consultations to see whether the deadlock among party leaders can be broken. If not, a new election in June is inevitable.

But the disenchantment is such that analysts predict many Spaniards will not even bother to vote.

Francesc Homs, a Catalan separatist lawmaker, said he expected a 10 percent drop in turnout. In October, neighboring Portugal also held an inconclusive election, he noted, but then formed a new government within two months.

“Nobody has had to repeat elections like this,” Mr. Homs said. “So I’m sure that if this happens, it will trigger a higher level of concern around Europe and internationally.”

Clara Alfaro, a shoe designer in Madrid, said that if it came to a new election in June, she would vote if only “because this situation somehow has to be unblocked.”

“If this was a country where politicians really cared about the functioning of Spain, there would have been an agreement by now,” she said.

José Gómez, an architecture student and activist with the Podemos party, described the recent coalition talks as “just a joke.”

After the December election, all the party leaders “knew that they were too stuck in their ways to form any government,” he said. “So it’s just about organizing a circus until the next ones.”

西班牙無政府 邁入第5個月

紐約時報報導，比利時五年前曾有五百八十九天沒有政府，不讓比利時專美於前，西班牙的無政府狀態也將邁入第五個月，而且許多分析家預測，很可能再持續六個月以上。

西班牙去年十二月的國會大選沒有明顯的贏家，四個主要政黨迄今仍無法組成政府，五月二日是選出總理的最後期限，各政黨領袖廿六日會見西班牙國王菲利佩六世，進行最後一輪協商，這已是國王第三度嘗試化解僵局，若再無法成局，可能在六月重選。

但民調顯示，重新選舉也無助於打破僵局。

紐時指出，近來不少人用「馬戲團」來形容西班牙的政治亂象。右派人民黨的前總理拉荷義拒絕組成新政府，卻抓著代理總理的職務不放。他的部長拒絕承認新選出來的國會，新國會則向法院控告代理政府不承認國會的合法性，但國會也不承認拉荷義的合法性。

去年國會大選時，新生代政黨領袖承諾將改變和進行憲法改革，而如今西班牙正瀕臨憲法危機。

西班牙「國家報」專欄作家阿蒙說：「政治人物形象很差，所有政黨領袖都把個人的生存置於國家利益之上。」

雖然人民對政治人物的觀感已不能更糟，近年所有政黨都涉入貪腐醜聞，但今年初以來，人民更對政治體制喪失信心。

本月六日國會的辯論原本有機會挑戰拉荷義為何支持歐盟要土耳其收回難民的政策，但人道考量很快就轉變為兩個卅多歲的新政黨領袖的個人爭鬥，自由派政黨「公民黨」的李維拉和極右派政黨「我們可以」黨的伊格萊西亞斯雖是新生代，但作為與舊世代政治人物沒兩樣。

資深記者安森最近在專欄中寫道：「西班牙政治已成為馬戲團，表演特技的領袖們對著已麻木的人民表演腳尖旋轉的滑稽動作。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/world/europe/discord-pushes-spain-toward-fourth-month-with-no-government.html

2016-04-27．聯合報．A15．國際．編譯田思怡