ERC has more explaining to do over Gencat jobs blackmail

From El País (in full): ‘Esquerra hums and haws’ | [Editorial] “The employees of the Catalan regional government departments controlled by the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) have been told by letter to pay part of their salary to this party, and, if they are not members, to fill out a form to become affiliated to the party so that they can be ‘registered as officials appointed by the ERC.’ The explanations offered by several party leaders have been confused or deceptive. They will have to explain themselves better in the Catalan parliament, and, if they do not find more convincing arguments, perhaps they should consider demanding the resignation of the person who signed the letters: Xavier Vendrell, general secretary to the Catalan deputy premier, Josep Bargalló, as well as the ERC’s secretary for organisation and finance.

It is problematic enough, in the first place, that a party’s financial chief occupy at the same time a high-level post in the department that oversees all the staff of the regional government’s civil service. This sort of blackmail against public officials, under threat of dismissal in the name of an internal party norm, aggravates the conflict of interests, and reveals that the notorious Italian system of ‘lottizzazione’ (allocations) has been translated into Catalan terms: each political party is viewed as the owner of a quota of public jobs. Far from being a mere ‘internal problem for Esquerra’, in the words of the Catalan Socialist Party’s number two, José Montilla, this issue affects the whole Catalan government, which is responsible for the appointment of high-level officials.

From the tone of the letters and the explanations given by the leaders, it is evident that the ERC has been acting with all the brazen confidence of a party long inured to operating a cynical, pork-barrel client system – even if, when questioned, if falls back on the moralistic arguments typical of a left-wing splinter party. According to ERC spokesman Joan Puigcercós, behind the public revelation of these letters lies a campaign to force his party to vote for the new Catalan statute. And according to Bargalló, the ERC is proud of financing itself not through illegal commissions, but ‘with the dues paid by members and the contributions made by high-level officials’.

This last point is, at the very least, misleading. The bulk of the ERC’s funds, like that of most parties, comes from the substantial public subsidies it receives. According to the most recent available data, in 2002 - when it had only one deputy in the Spanish Congress in Madrid, and a dozen in the regional parliament in Catalonia - the party received through this channel some 77.7 percent of its total income. Contributions from members supplied about €450,000, or 20 percent of the party’s income. Now, with 23 deputies in Catalonia and eight in Madrid, the public subsidies received thanks to the legislation on political party funding will doubtless be much larger. All the citizens contribute with their taxes to these funds, and they have a right to demand explanations.”

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