Introduction
I don’t know what or how many reasons it is due, but the world is becoming polarized, it is becoming ungovernable, it is becoming unlivable due to the tense and rarefied environment, and a solution must be found for this trend. This may be in a saying that is bullshit, but that makes sense and says: “the world is polarized. Who will depolarize it? The depolarized person who depolarizes it, will be a good depolarized person”. Well that’s it, we just need to find the best depolarizer.
The tensions that polarization brings are spreading throughout the world. The economic ones and the leadership between China and the US, the fiscal ones between Europe and the US, the ideological ones, the religious ones, regional tensions such as those in the Maghreb, those in the Middle East, etc., border tensions such as those existing between China and India, those between Israel and Palestine, the tensions in Yemen, and those that have already degenerated into an open war like the one between Russia and Ukraine. If I continue, it would be an endless list.
I don’t know if prosperity and the consequent inequality have anything to do with the strengthening of this pernicious trend. But the least it seems. Because there have never been so many wars in a given period of human history as in this one. If we took account of the conflicts that occurred in the 20th century and so far in the 21st century, we would exceed the hundred figure, I think, which is outrageous, since being the only living species with the ability to agree, the more we know, the more experience we have, more than the capacity to reach agreements we have, and I refer to the results.
Polarization in the US
We have an excellent example of what results when a ruler and his policies polarize a country in the United States during Donald Trump’s mandate. This is a bad example of governance of a country that the whole world knows from north to south and from east to west. The world was alarmed when the violent assault on Congress took place after the bad electoral result adverse to the Republicans, who they rejected on the grounds that there was cheating in the vote count, and that removed Trump from the Presidency, which I consider to be a consequence of the previous and high voltage polarization existing among the electorate. In this case, moderation wins. And it is that moderation is the best treatment against polarization.
Trump is not an example of moderation, the judges elected to the Supreme Court, and his decisions on abortion, for example, are what have pensioned the country, taking it to extremes. In this sense, federalism and the majority electoral system in the United States privilege the representation of the rural states of the center of the country, conservative and sparsely populated, in such a way that since 1994 Congress has been practically divided into two halves, despite that the Republican Party actually represents a minority of national opinion. In this way the elections are existentially close: a few seats determine control of the House of Representatives, and only one the Senate.
Jaime Ojeda writes in Foreign Policy that since “the electorate is mainly concerned about inflation and the rising cost of living, and the Republicans attribute them to the Democrats for their economic policy and the generous subsidies they have “gifted” to the population . They blame the Democrats for not having resolved the tremendous problem of immigration, which mainly agitates the social sector that supports them, without wanting to recognize that it has been their obstructionism that has prevented the reform of the system. The issue of abortion, inflamed by a Supreme Court ruling, has been left in the background, and the denunciations of the tricks of the Republicans to restrict or even suppress the vote have not finished alerting opinion”.
But in these midterm elections in the US, I am surprised that this time there has been no violence, no voter intimidation, no threats to election officials that are expected from Trump supporters.
I also agree with Jaime Ojeda when he affirms that “it has been the independents and the moderates of both parties who have won this authentic national referendum. They have alienated both extremists from Trumpism and extremists from the ideological left from the Democrats. Legislative elections midway through the presidential term have always been a referendum on the president; this time they have also been a referendum for Trump and the Republicans.”
And so we return to the beginning, concluding that the best depolarizer capable of reversing the process is the vote in the hands of a moderate and judicious electorate, at least in Democracy.
The polarization in Spain
Let’s go with a second example of how polarization due to the nefarious political action of the Government and the opposition is capable of causing damage to a country. In this case, I will use my country as an example: Spain, which since the first coalition government of the recent democratic period between the PSOE and Unidas Podemos took over the government, the country has been divided into two opposing forces, with a pandemic of medium, which drew dividing lines between the policies applied by the Government and that the opposition flatly rejected. The government and the opposition were unable to agree on a state policy in defense of the population’s health during the pandemic, which ended in constant clashes in Parliament, they were unable to agree on a state policy on the matter of economy, nor of defense of employment, nor in defense of companies, nor in renewing some Judicial Bodies of which some vacancies arrive for more than a year without being renewed.
To this we must add the fact that the independence parties collaborate with their votes in Parliament so that the Government obtains an absolute majority, in exchange for a compensation that I will comment on later.
The newspaper library has done a lot of harm to Spanish President Pedro Sánchez. The archives of the TV media in Spain and all the written press accumulate videos and covers of all kinds in which the Prime Minister says one thing and the opposite with more or less time in between. Because of this, and because of his acts of government, he has earned a well-deserved reputation as an unreliable politician, and not only in Spain in the face of other parties and voters, but also abroad. And if not, ask about Pedro Sanchez in the Maghreb.
But our President is not like that with everyone. With the Catalan separatists, for example, he behaves differently. When these, with their vote, gave Pedro Sanchez the majority necessary to reach the Presidency of the Government, they gave it to him in exchange for something: this is to pardon the convicted prisoners of the Process, and the commitment to repeal the crime of sedition of our body legal to replace it with another known as “aggravated public disorder”, with sentences much lower than the crime of sedition that it intends to replace, and the Government says that it does so with the intention that this new qualification be comparable with similar crimes contemplated in other European countries .
Here it does. He rolls up his sleeves and gets to work in a frenzy, not giving a damn what the Spanish think, even those who vote for him, since there is a large majority who do not agree with this decision.
Of the two promises, the first was quickly fulfilled, since the condemned and their parties were urged to get them out of jail as soon as possible, because for them they are heroes worthy of all consideration, not villains who have to purge their guilt in jail.
To fulfill the second promise, the Government has a plan, which involves completely suppressing Chapter I of Title XXII of the Criminal Code, which details the crime of sedition in six articles, and at the same time modifies Article 557, which refers to public disorder by modifying its content and to which it adds the adornment of “aggravated”, which of course does not refer to the penalties that will have to be applied, which will always be less than those of the crimes of sedition which it intends to replace.
The question that must be asked then, is why so much interest on the part of the independents in getting them out of jail and in repealing sedition? Well for three reasons:
The first of them is to ensure that the exiled independentistas can return to Spain, being then tried for minor crimes, since they can no longer be accused of the crime of sedition.
The second is because those who have been tried, convicted and subsequently pardoned, will see the disqualification that was part of their sentences eliminated, and they will then be able to hold public office (we will see how long it takes for the Generalitat to give them an easy chair and command in the plaza), and they will be able to present themselves to the elections, with which we may see a person convicted of sedition, and later pardoned, obtain the Presidency of the Generalitat through the independence vote (if they win, God forbid), with which we would return to the beginning of the times of the seditious riots.
The third is that if they try again, that is, if the Independentistas return to their old ways, better organized, with better preparation, with more experience, with more means, and without the State having the legal force to put an end to them, they can that the third time, the charm goes and Spain loses Catalonia. We know that this is possible, because it continues to be the goal that the independentistas have burned into their brains. Alvaro grandson says the following about it: “You can disagree about pardons, but it is very difficult to justify that a government promotes a lowering of the Penal Code at the request of some criminals”, and I absolutely agree.
No country worth its salt, and certainly none that is democratic, makes laws to the liking of those who break them, to make it easier for criminals or rebels. But Pedro Sanchez is different, I don’t know if he remembers that because of the pardons for the corrupt, Juan Espadas’ PSOE lost this Andalusian election. If you don’t remember, it would be better for you to recover your memory as soon as possible, because the one who is attached to the presidential chair and the Falcon Jet will understand that he has taken a very important step to lose the confidence of the rest of the Spaniards who still trusted him, and your vote at the same time, including those of his own party. And it doesn’t even occur to the person who roasted the lard to fulfill a promise that at one point, whether due to mental weakness or extreme ambition, grant the enemies of the state what the rebels asked for.
In the opposition, for its part, the Conservative Popular Party has shouted to the heavens as expected, and in this case rightly so, and has broken all bridges with the PSOE, which can stay as Crimea. The PP already saw it coming, and for this reason Feijoó introduced the issue in the negotiation of the renewal of the judicial institutions, and for the same reason the PSOE shouted to the heavens for including the PP in the renewal. Both issues are very important and vital for Spain, but given priority, the first thing is to guarantee the integrity of the country, and then comes the renewal of the judicial bodies. If the PSOE had accepted this proposal, leaving aside the reform of the crime of sedition, today we would have renewed the judicial bodies, and we would not be talking about the issue that led me to write this article.
At the time of writing this article, the tension reached in the country is very high, when the time will soon come for intermediate elections in which the mayors of the municipalities and the provincial deputies will be elected on the one hand, and the parliaments of some autonomies and the regional autonomic presidents on the other, which is scheduled for May 2023, being the end of 2023 when the general elections that will elect the new parliament and the President of the New Government are scheduled.
That is when the Spanish of the silent majority, the moderate voters of the right and left, those who do not shout but go to the polls with their envelope, the sensible Spain that feels bored with so much nonsense and tired of so much media and political clamor, He will decide that this behavior is not getting us anywhere, and he will kick out of his seat those who did not measure up to the circumstances and what the country needs.
Once again, the people will be the best depolarizer capable of redirecting the direction of the country towards the State Policies agreed upon by the negotiation between the Government and the opposition. I will look for those who are interested in dialogue and negotiation and have the capacity to do so. They will take my vote. You can be from the right or from the left, you can be conservative or reformist, what you cannot be is provocative or polarizing. They are the ones who lead us into confrontation, so let’s do our best not to elect them to represent us.
Let’s recover in a sense of moderation and common sense: the least common of the senses. The Americans did it, we can do it too.
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