While most attention has been paid to the collapse of the Partido Popular vote at the elections in the Balearics and to the role of President Bauzá, PSOE’s dismal performance has been rather overlooked.
With four fewer deputies in the regional parliament than after the 2011 elections (when there were eighteen thanks to four from an additional PSOE-Pacte grouping), the result for PSOE of last Sunday’s election is equally as bad. PSOE has been squeezed by Podemos (and Més), there is no question about that, but its fall says as much for a lacklustre campaign as it does for the rise of the alternative left. PSOE is in an almighty mess, and the assumption that its leader, Francina Armengol, will emerge from this mess as the new president is now seriously in doubt.
The leaders of Podemos and Més, Alberto Jarabo and Biel Barceló, started their cosying up almost as soon as the last results were coming through on Sunday. There is a unity of purpose about them and despite Podemos having won more seats in parliament than Més in Majorca and Minorca together, Jarabo is more than happy to let Barceló become the next president of the Balearics.
This is not surprising. While Podemos seeks a role in government, its ambitions are not solely about having power. It is transformation it wants above all else. Moreover, Jarabo has no experience of politics. Almost by definition, this is the case with Podemos, as the party’s principles are such that anyone who has held office with another party is excluded from its candidate ranks.
Barceló is experienced, and a point I made several months ago was that I could see him acting as a type of mentor to Podemos in government: this may well now prove to be the case.
The chances of Barceló becoming president are growing by the day. Podemos’ national leader, Pablo Iglesias, has said that Podemos will not accept being part of coalitions if PSOE leads them. Consequently, it would be prepared to have PSOE as a coalition partner, but in the Balearics this would mean that Francina Armengol could not be president. The realisation will now be dawning on PSOE that it is destined to be the junior partner behind a combination of Més and Podemos.
This was not how it was supposed to be, but the election has produced a dynamic which seems almost unstoppable, and if it is one that ends with PSOE being relegated to the junior role, it will represent a humiliation, one for which, however, there will be very little sympathy.
PSOE has failed in the past four years to reassert itself. Armengol has not brought about changes she promised. There was a tiredness about its election campaign, and the electorate has grown tired of it and not forgiven the crisis that arose during its time in office.
There is, however, a danger in all this for Més and Podemos. While the latter in particular might revel in this humiliation, there also has to be some magnanimity.
Plus, and crucially, they need PSOE if they are to form a majority. It’s not also as if they are poles apart on certain issues. PSOE would probably now accept a tourist tax, for instance. Armengol had been equivocal on this prior to the election, albeit that a PSOE spokesperson, Cosme Bonet, had spoken in favour of it.
On other tourism matters, such as a more permissive regime for holiday lets, there is general agreement, as there also is regarding education, language and social rights.
Purely in terms of policy, therefore, there is a good deal of common ground. It is the psychology where the differences emerge, and for Armengol, being bossed by Barceló (and Jarabo) could be difficult to swallow.
There is another option. It was mentioned before the election but no one really took it seriously, and that is a coalition between PSOE and the PP. There are plenty who would like to see it happen, not least business leaders who would look upon such a coalition as producing the stability that became a byword for this election. Might PSOE actually give this consideration? There would be danger for PSOE were it to enter into such an arrangement as it would represent a confirmation of the perpetuation of the reviled two-party “casta” system of the PP and PSOE that Podemos has been at pains to break.
For PSOE, going cap in hand to the PP would be a different humiliation and it might be one from which it struggles to recover: Podemos would have a field day in attacking it for an obsession with retaining power at all costs, and the electorate might agree and turn its back on PSOE for good. Or at least for the foreseeable future, one that includes the general election.
But as PSOE is ruling out pacts with the PP at municipal level - no such pacts will be authorised, says another spokesperson Silvia Cano - then it would be hard to see how PSOE could make one at regional government level.
This being so, there is a further option: PSOE refuses to join any coalition. Would rejection of pacts be preferable to humiliation? Were it to be, then chaos would reign. Who would be president? The PP would struggle on purely because it has been the government, but the parliamentary deputies would not invest Bauzá as president. It would be a similar situation to the one that has existed in Andalusia since the election there in March. Though Bauzá has said he will go - and the rumblings for him to go immediately are growing louder - the chaos that might ensue if PSOE did not join a coalition could play into the PP’s hands. Perhaps this is what Mariano Rajoy wants.
The PP nationally has said that regional congresses to choose new leaders cannot take place until after the general election (probably in November).
There would, therefore, be the bones of a party apparatus in place if the worst were to happen: that there has to be another election if no agreements as to coalitions and presidents can be agreed to.
For the PP, regardless of the chaos of all but non-government in the meantime, this could prove to be advantageous. It could argue, as it did before the election, that instability has resulted from voting for the alternative parties.
It would make for a stronger message going into the national election, one in which PSOE, based on performances such as the one in the Balearics, will be a loser once more.