Don't dig in, just go

"To be good - who wouldn't wish for that? But on this sorry planet, the means are few. Who would not, for example, wish to be honest? But are the right circumstances there? No! There are no such circumstances!"

These true words of Bertolt Brecht ought to awaken those who, in silence and thus in complicity, sit and watch the spectacle of the fall of values, the justification of lying, the denial of political honesty and the disappearance of decency in the political life of Spain.

It is becoming harder and harder to understand the indifference of a large number of Spanish people who stoically accept, or even excuse, the recurrent corruption scandals as part of our daily life. This contingent, alarmingly numerous among us, accepts without revulsion the shoddy explanations offered by those who are under a shadow of criminal activity. They are unmoved when a prime minister, directly questioned, has no answer to the serious accusations of corruption against him, other than to promise a parliamentary appearance 20 days after the scandal first surfaced in the courts, and to grant a scripted media interview in which he justifies his ominous silence with a laconic plea of respect for democracy (he being an elected representative).

In the media, objective analysis is a thing of the past. Only partial rhetoric survives. The democracy plea is meaningless when democracy has previously been violated (acceptance of bribes, concealment of undeclared funds, illegal financing of a political party). What democracy are they talking about? Those who behave in this manner, especially when they are at the highest levels of government, do not deserve the confidence of the public, because they are the chief danger to the substance of the democratic system, since they violate their oath of devotion to public service and to the defense of constitutional values.

In the media, objective analysis is a thing of the past. Only partial rhetoric survives

The principle, so rooted in other democracies, that you resign when you are caught with your hand in the till, seems unclear in ours, leaving a broad gray area open to arbitrary conduct and crime. Corruption affects the structure of the state, generating inequality and impoverishment - which is, however, defended by those who benefit from it. In spite of all this, in Spain we hear no clamor from the public, above and beyond political differences, against those who have broken their contract with the citizens, by deceiving them. From Bárcenas to Nóos, what is really worrying about these cases is how those who are responsible at the highest levels foment contempt for the justice system and work to undermine it, even from within.

Silence makes us accomplices to this situation. Denunciation of systemic corruption is necessary, against the purchase of anesthetized consciences, in persons who defend the impunity of this conduct.

I cannot understand how voters of the Popular Party, or of any other party, in the face of the shower of filth emitted by a thousand acts of corruption, can remain silent for the sole reason that those who act immorally are of their ideology. The struggle against corruption is not a question of ideology. It is a question of therapy, and for this reason, resignation is a measure of democratic regeneration.

When millions of decent people want to see cleanliness and transparency; when social inequality among Spanish people is growing wider day by day; when the economic crisis presses us ever more painfully, it is unacceptable to see the alarming reality of corruption still being swept under the rug at the highest levels of government, utilizing the shopworn argument that corruption also exists in Andalusia, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Murcia and Castilla y León. All this only reaffirms the need for Mr Rajoy not to dig in, but just go, with or without the formality of resignation.