Strategies

In keeping with the rest of Spain, Mojácar will be going to the polls on Sunday, May 27th. Unlike the rest of Spain, however, where the usual offer is two or three parties fighting for your support – perhaps the PP and the PSOE and some regionalist group – here in Mojácar we have (apparently) twelve parties to choose from.

This is not as democratic as it sounds, as with this many parties, there can easily be an uneasy coalition of groups within the town hall, with no clear vision of the future. In 2003, something like this happened when nine parties ran, gathering between them just 2,250 votes. Six of the parties managed to raise at least one councillor and the eventual line-up in the town hall was one right wing NGM, two PP clones from GIAL, two regionalists from PA and two communists from the Aiz – hardly an ideal mixture. Nevertheless, the coalition lasted two years before one of the PA ‘took the shilling’ and switched to back the extraordinary marriage between the PP and the PSOE. Even more curious, the PSOE with two councillors took the mayor’s chair while the four councillors for the PP happily brought up the rear.

It eventually emerged that the PP and PSOE had struck a secret deal of ‘one year each’ in the mayor’s office but when the time came to switch, the mayor, Gabriel Flores, dug in his heels. Incensed at this breach of his word (!), the PP walked out of the town hall, but two of their members rushed back in again to continue with their activities. The result was 2 PSOE (by this time considered ‘transfugas’ or ‘turncoats’ by the PSOE in Almeria), 2 PP – also transfugas, 1 PA (Jose Luis Artero – also a transfuga) and, after Angel Medina quit his post in the opposition allowing the following name on the list to go through, the Englishman Matthew Shattford, who promptly jumped into the governing junta’s arms, we can add 1 from the GIAL, also a transfuga!
In short, by the beginning of 2007, the entire town hall of Mojácar was being run by a group who represented no party whatsoever and had no votes to justify themselves.
This must not happen again.

In 2007, we have, as stated, some twelve parties. Many of them are ‘clones’ which means they are copies of either the PP or the PSOE but with other candidates. Such examples are the GIAL, the PAL and the PSA. This of course makes for fractured, weak and disunited conservative and socialist parties with little hope of attracting any support from non-obliged voters. At the same time, the outgoing town hall group – whose members are now unable to run either in the PP or the PSOE – have made a stand together as the Grupo Democratico Social. This group (whose ‘word’ may be a bit ‘shaky’) is made up, therefore, of ‘transfugas’. However, Mojácar’s best known ‘transfuga’, Jose Luis Artero, has gone into another fringe group, the Levante sin Cables – an association of people who want to stop the huge electricity towers running along the riverbed. Unfortunately, this single-issue party will have to wait until the results of the election on May 27th to see if they can ‘do’ anything – by which time, it will be too late!

It hardly seems worth pointing out that people who break their word should not be given another chance in politics…

Some other small groups, the PA, the PIMoj and the Mojacar Nueva will probably just be anecdotal. The leader of the later one has no experience in politics – or friends in high places - although he once sued a previous mayor for not letting him build an urbanisation above the Parata.

The worry is that all of these parties may hope to bring in the odd councillor and, between them, create some truly ugly hydra with four or five or even six different parties running a wobbly coalition – which none of the voters – in any stretch of the imagination – ever wanted.

I would suggest here, that there are not twelve alternatives for the next town hall, but two. One is a strong government which treats and considers all mojaqueros the same. A town hall that is bilingual, honest and forward-looking. Ciudadanos Europeos de Mojacar: united and integrated.
The other alternative is chaos; anarchy; greed and failure. We owe it to Mojácar to elect a strong town hall and to make our town the best possible place it can be.
Lenox Napier