Comparing Apples to Apples

When politicians speak of a silent majority, beware.  Pay attention and see if you can find evidence of that majority.  Where are they hiding?  In the case of the PP in Catalonia, their silent majority never receives as much as 9% of the vote.  And they are not hiding, they simply do not exist.  The silent majority who would vote for PP, who like the fact that their elected government has been taken over and their legitimately elected leaders are in jail does not exist.  If you believe in it, you probably also believe in the great pumpkin.

Spanish President Rajoy is here in Barcelona today stumping for his party (the PP) in pre-campaign mode leading up to the elections he called for 21 December.  According to Spanish law, it was illegal for him to call elections.  That is the prerogative only of the President of the Generalitat (the Catalan government).  But he did it anyway and no one in the EU or anywhere else bats an eye because he says it is legal.  It’s reminiscent of Trump who says his Muslim travel ban is not a Muslim travel.  There are lots of people who believe that too.  But fortunately for Americans, they are not the ones in the judiciary.  Spain does not have that safeguard.

In his speech today Rajoy claimed the elections would be “clean, fully democratic,” as well as “with transparency in their development and scrutiny,” unlike, he said, the illegal referendum that had no legal guarantees.

But his elections do not replace the referendum.  They replace the clean, democratic elections with all legal guarantees that took place in Catalonia on 27 September 2015, when the current (or recently eradicated) Catalan parliament was elected.  That parliament, the elected President, all the ministers, have been thrown out, told not to return to their elected posts or face charges of disobedience.  Most of that government is in prison and the rest are in exile in Belgium.

The referendum, that, according to international law, was not illegal, did not have the legal guarantees because Rajoy destroyed those guarantees.  It could have and would have been perfectly clean and fully democratic if left to be carried out as planned.

So if Rajoy wants to talk about clean, fully democratic elections, let him compare the one he has called with the one he obliterated.  Let him compare apples with apples.