Resigned to resignation?

Lie-mongering is the common factor that led to the Popular Party's defeat in the 2004 elections, and will soon lead to the replacement of Rajoy as prime minister. It seems likely that he will resign rather than submit to blackmail. This proposition ought to apply to every honest politician. One's elementary duty to the voters involves not yielding to blackmail; but it is also your duty to resign when your misconduct is manifest - just as the blackmailer who renders a service to the judge by revealing the names of his partners in crime is in no way exempt from guilt, despite the fact he has collaborated with the law. In any case, what the judge has to look at is the proof offered to support what the blackmailer says.

Viewers will remember how in 2007, on a TV program in which political figures fielded questions from a live studio audience, Mariano Rajoy, then in opposition, slipped out of giving a precise answer to the direct question of how much money he made. Since then the question has remained unanswered. But some clues have lately been given by the treasurer-emeritus of the PP, Luis Bárcenas, who held the job for decades. He now appears before the judge and tells of the sums handed in brown envelopes to the then-president of the PP, as well as other irrefutable data on the party's illegal financing. Once again, we are looking at a shining conflict of interests and personalities, unlike the complicit agreement that ensures darkness.

We know that it is the difference in charge between the anode and the cathode that causes the spark to jump between the poles, generating the electric arc that, in the cinemas of yesteryear, enabled the public to see the movie of the facts. Whereas if the difference of power is annulled, if dissent is neutralized, no arc jumps, and all sorts of murky groping and funny business can go on in the dark cinema. There may have been a time when Bárcenas and his beneficiaries, like gangsters arguing in a garage over the division of the loot, could have made their getaway together when the police sirens were heard, but that time is over, and we are looking at another scenario.

One's elementary duty to the voters involves not yielding to blackmail; but it is also your duty to resign when your misconduct is manifest

At this time a little posthumous praise seems in order for Prime Minister Rajoy - if, as he and his inner circle maintain, he has held out against yielding to the blackmail of the arch-crook who was prepared to remain silent, provided the prime minister could keep him out of jail. He who knew the exact moment for a meeting with the masked leadership of ETA, and later for conveying tactful, timely advice to a list of killers, swindlers and grafters including José Amedo and Michel Domínguez, Mario Conde, Juan Alberto Perote and Luis Roldán, who at one time or other preceded Bárcenas behind bars. The late Jesús Gil y Gil - the archetype of the Spanish political crook - once remarked that jail is only for a year or two, but poverty is forever.

The pretension of holding a monopoly on service to Spain and to the Spanish people, so as to cast a shadow of discredit upon the opposition for seeking to bring down the government, is unacceptable. The other political parties in parliament have found themselves obliged to call for explanations or resignations, merely because otherwise the whole country would have cried "fixing!" in the unavoidable suspicion of a cynical "I'll scratch your back today, you scratch mine tomorrow" consensus between the parties. Prime Minister Rajoy has disqualified himself from the exercising of his duties, and now he has to be substituted via the investiture of a new candidate. Who this will be, is up to the PP's parliamentary group. With an ample majority of 187 deputies, they will have no problem electing them. Other countries accomplish these changeovers without problems. Rajoy and his lies are now only a liability. To be continued.