The usual pre-election purge hits Mojácar

Rosmari, the leader of Mojácar, has had a blowout with her political allies in Mojacar and fired Carlos Cervantes (bearded fellow, leftwing leader of the IU and similar, used to be mayor until he was cut down) and Angel Medina (leader of Cuidadanos Europeos, never been mayor but would like to), both (now ex-) senior councillors and coalition allies in her townhall.

It’s all amazingly complicated and I can’t pretend to be bothered to memorise the ins and outs of Mojacar politics – apparantly, the third town with the most changes of governments due to no-confidence votes ever in Spanish democracy- but Rosmari got in, despite having a minority of the vote, by a complicated alliance and coalition, which allowed her to no-confidence the other bugger shortly after the last elections.

It’s one of the wonderful aspects of Spanish democracy, that the people can vote in one party, but then the other lot get organised, “convince” someone to swop sides, and suddenly a person with less that 25% of the vote is running the show. Ah, democracy. It’s a wonderful system. Or, as Oscar W. once said (no doubt languidly), democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

This means that Rosmari now has a minority government, but three months before the next elections, the rest probably won’t get their act together to throw her out (she has five councillors, so at least six people -from several different parties- would need to form a coalition and vote for a new mayor in a non-confidence vote to evict her). It does mean that she can’t force anything through the townhall, as she doesn’t have the votes, so from now on Mojacar is, in essence, without a government.

The reasons for last nights pogrom was, it seems, a dispute over the horrific plan to bulldoze off the top of Mojacar and build an expensive car park. The original plan was caused by the need to spend 5 odd million raised from the semi-illegal sale of public land at cost to the Macenas development (ah-hem – the judicial investigation continues). Rumours that Rosmari’s brother/cousin/dad/best mate was getting the building contract are, the townhall assures me, unfounded*.

Some people like it, some are against it, Carlos Cervantes has said that he no longer cares and plans to retire at the next election (good luck to him, he seems to be a nice chap every time I met him and is getting on in years), Angel Medina needs to concentrate on his Cuidadanos Europeos movement, and basically everybody has realised that not one citizen in Mojacar is for the car park and so it’s best to leave Rosmari by herself and blame the whole mess on her.

Rats, sinking ship, no need to enter the next election under a coalition banner and Rosmari striking it off alone all come to mind.

Meanwhile, Angel Medina, warned the Mayor this morning that “we all know you’re doing some strange things; we’re going to be especially vigilent now to make sure you don’t commit any illegality”. He should know – he was second in command until yesterday. (Teleprensa). The Teleprensa article is next to a great editorial: What is happening in Mojacar and Huercal de Almeria is a clear display of opportunism by some who call themselves politicians, who group under some initials and govern for four years minus three months, enough time to plan their next political misadventure. This is neither politics, nor working for the common good.

Harsh stuff from the fully impartial* Teleprensa.

Just for fun, here are the results of the last 2007 election in Mojacar:

*take as you will.