The PP’s credibility

The need to reduce the number of politicians in Spain, as well as bring down their salaries, has been a constant theme of the Popular Party’s discourse in recent years. But the sincerity of this rhetoric looks questionable as more and more revelations emerge concerning a system of bonuses that were regularly paid out by the party to a yet-undetermined number of its leaders, suggesting that what the party is preaching is radically different from its practices. The only real guarantee against abuses is for the funds that are received and spent by those who are paid from the public purse to be general knowledge — not the hypocritical talk of reducing the cost of politics that is being so impudently indulged in by a party that, behind the scenes, was operating a system designed to boost their own salaries.

The PP maintains that all the amounts that were paid out to its leaders were duly declared to the tax office. If the bonuses had, moreover, been opaque to the Treasury, the matter would have been even more serious. For the moment, what the PP needs to explain are the reasons that lie behind a system that is largely hidden from voters and taxpayers, the origin of the funds received, and what was given in exchange for them.

Several persons belonging to the PP have admitted in court to having received the payments detailed in the secret accounts of the party’s former treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, and which were first published in EL PAÍS on January 31. But the issue here is not just the fact that the Senate speaker, Pío García Escudero, and the deputy, Eugenio Nasarre, have already admitted to receiving these bonuses, referred to as “representation expenses” in the euphemistic jargon used in the accounts. The most significant detail is that Nasarre admitted to having received 30,000 euros that was earmarked for the Humanism and Democracy Foundation. He was given the cash, apparently, in “envelopes” within a “brown box,” as well as another 40,000 euros, also in cash, which was for another patron of the foundation. This admission, which does credit to Eugenio Nasarre, points to widespread dealings in cash within the headquarters of the party — all the more suspicious given that transparent, above-board payments are not made in this manner, not currently nor 10 years ago.

The governing party claims that all of this is legal, according to the legislation in place at the time. Judge Pablo Ruz, who is investigating the PP’s finances, has a tortuous path ahead of him. And while the criminal consequences, if any, of these payments are not exactly clear, it is certainly worth it, for the sake of the citizen and the voter, for the facts to be clarified. In a televised interview on Tuesday evening, former PP Prime Minister José María Aznar flatly denied having received bonuses, either when he was in opposition as head of the party, or later when he was head of the government.

Suspicions grow even further, however, given the news that the head of the corrupt Gürtel business network, Francisco Correa, gave an ostentatious wedding gift worth 32,432 euros to the son-in-law of Ana Botella and Aznar, when the latter was prime minister. Not to mention the fact that Correa’s companies organized electoral rallies for the PP at no cost to the party. These suspicions have to be cleared up because what is at stake is the credibility of Spain’s main political party.