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Strange bedfellows
Cassandra Nash
ULTRARIGHTWING party Vox recently registered a request for a Vote of No Confidence in the president of Spain’s government, Pedro Sanchez.
Party leader Santiago Abascal, who made the application accompanied by members of Vox’s executive committee, explained afterwards to the waiting media that the party could not sit with folded arms “while Sanchez demolishes Rule of Law.”
Vox would not admit that nothing was amiss when Spain had a government that was capable of lying to voters and making pacts with Spain’s enemies, Abascal declared.
In line with Spanish legislation, Vox must propose a candidate prepared to lead a new government, assuming that the vote is held and Sanchez fails to obtain sufficient support to remain in office.
Funnily enough, Vox’s candidate is an 89yearold former university professor, Ramon Tamames, a Communist imprisoned during the Franco years and an MP for the Partido Comunista Español (PCE) from 1977 to 1982.
He returned to parliament between
19861989 representing the PCE’s heir, Izquierda Unida (IU), the party with which he merged his own Federacion Progresista party created in 1981. He was also Madrid’s deputy mayor between 1979 and 1989.
Tamames left IU in 1989 when still an MP and fixed his colours to the mast of Adolfo Suarez’s centrist party, Centro Democratico y Social (CDS) but left politics shortly afterwards.
He clearly has form when it comes to drifting towards the Right, but nobody expected Tamames to make landfall in a party like Vox.
For Abascal, Tamames “embodies harmony and unity over and above sectarianism.” Neither does he confess to qualms regarding the ex communist’s speech introducing the censure motion, which is in any case doomed to failure.
“I’ve no concerns that Professor Tamames might make proposals that aren’t those of Vox,” said Abascal.
The last word goes to Cristina Almeida, a fellow communist as well as a former Madrid city hall councillor, regional MP and senator who knows Tamames well.
“He doesn’t know what he’s getting into. But nor does Vox.”
ITV and, more recently, Sky Sports. Does the public really want to see this kind of selfcentred person on their screens? Cannot equally qualified but decent, charismatic alternatives be found to take their place? ITV and Sky Sports seem to have a problem with this.
Maybe Clarkson, who prides himself on a controversial image, should better direct his venomous dreams to somebody like Putin assuming he disapproves of the Russian’s actions. I’m sure he would
It seems, however, that many people harbour the same hatred of somebody whose decisions and opinions they disagree with (or whom they don’t relate to) as of one who inflicts mental or physical hurt on other beings, sometimes on a massive scale.
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