The electoral system for the Parliament of the Canary Islands, which will be repealed soon, happily and formally, was conceived not only to prop up and perpetuate the Canarian Coalition (and the interests it represents) in the government, preventing alternation, but also to consolidate the Canarian Coalition organizationally under the baton of the always resurgent ATI.
It was the increase in electoral barriers that put the 6% ticket in the hands of ATI, as a guarantee of the presence of island groups in Parliament in the event of not winning the elections or not exceeding 30% of the votes on their respective island. And therefore the hegemony of the Tenerife islanders - later nationalists over the Canarian Coalition.
After so many meritorious attempts to democratize the electoral system, which crashed against the wall of the Canarian Coalition and the help, why not say it, of some opinion of the Advisory Council prepared prêt-a-porter, the regulation incorporated into the new Statute of Autonomy is a great step forward.
However, the suspicion of the chronic maneuvering of the Canarian Coalition that some of us have lived and suffered for years, has made us extremely cautious about any loophole that may serve as an excuse to boycott the electoral reform. And to question the direct applicability of the new statutory regulation in the event that the Canarian Coalition tried and managed to block legislative initiatives to complete the "new" electoral system. In that case: is it directly applicable?
As a person with some legal knowledge and as a detractor for years of the electoral system of the Regime, of which the journals of sessions and official bulletins of the Senate and the Parliament of the Canary Islands have given good account, as well as the informative media of the Archipelago, I have recently expressed some opinions in this regard.
And after giving the matter many turns, I have reached some conclusions that make me reconsider my own positions. Therefore, these lines have the character of "self-amendment", although not in its entirety.
In summary:
If we take for granted that the deputies assigned to the new autonomous constituency will be voted in a separate candidacy and ballot box, through closed and blocked lists and distributed using the D´Hont formula --and, therefore, ruling out any other form of ballot, voting and distribution of those seats, such as some other variant of the proportional formula, which the new statutory wording would allow--, the new system can be directly applicable.
But some requirements must be met (the devil is in the details, which fortunately in the legal field are guarantees) that, although they are instrumental in nature and do not affect the substance of the regulation, require the modification of the current Canarian Electoral Law (Law 7/2003, whose debate and approval were described as a farce by Pepe Alcaraz, from the Parliament rostrum). And, therefore, they cannot be regulated by the Government or resolved by the Electoral Administration or by the courts.
The articles of the Canarian Electoral Law that regulate the Electoral Board of the Canary Islands must be modified, to attribute to it --according to all logic-- everything related to the presentation, examination of validity and proclamation of candidacies to the autonomous constituency, as well as the scrutiny and proclamation of the elected candidates.
And that Law must also be modified --which is an ordinary law and not the "law of the three fifths", required by the Statute to develop or modify some substantial aspects of the new electoral system-- to declare applicable to the candidacies to the autonomous constituency the same requirements of composition and presentation as those already established for the candidacies to the island constituencies.
It is not that the current Canarian electoral law can prevent the application of the new electoral system, but that it needs for the application of the autonomous constituency some "instrumental" regulations, which must be established by a rule with the rank of law. It is a matter of guarantees, in a matter in which the exercise of fundamental rights is at stake.
That's how things are in my opinion.
I am still wary of some trick by the Canarian Coalition; but not having those misgivings at this point in the film would be infinite naivety. It is my obligation to make these reflections known. And I am very grateful to fulfill it. And I would not like my commitment to the democratization of the electoral system and my misgivings about the manipulations of the Regime could end up being exploited by those who have degraded to infinity the "essence and value" of the Autonomy of this blessed land.
By Santiago Pérez, La Laguna.
