Politics in Spain are depressingly dysfunctional. The recent agreement reached to form government after the July election is yet another symbol of this stark, sad, hard-to-swallow reality.
As always, truth has been a ready victim at the hands of convenience. And if the second most voted party in the election decides that any price paid is one the country will gladly pay in order for them to retain power –oh such blessing!–, so be it — including the frivolous grant of all sorts of privileges and concessions to a political party with a fugitive leadership.
However, grave as that is, there are other little-noticed negative consequences of the much increased political polarization levels we are experiencing in the country. Distracting attention away from different matters really crucial to serve citizens’ long-term wellbeing is clearly one of them.
Such is the ideal setting to, for example, shamelessly water down pro-transparency legislation. Or to undermine anti-corruption independent public offices that could become a nuisance for those in power further down the road. We have been there before. And it now it looks as if soon we might be there again.
Who stands to lose from such developments? Unfortunately, all of us, acting as mere onlookers ripe to be tricked by a set of political representatives with no scruples and misaligned with the rest of us –with a functional democracy’s structural interests– to a tragic extent.