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What Indonesia should learn from the Catalan Matter

Indonesia could take a few notes on the Catalan Matter and pay some attention to the level of democratic legitimacy of the Reformasiregime.

Joan Ricart (The Jakarta Post)
Barcelona
Fri, October 20, 2017

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What Indonesia should learn from the Catalan Matter People wave Spanish flags during a demonstration called by 'Societat Civil Catalana' (Catalan Civil Society) to support the unity of Spain on Oct. 8, 2017 in Barcelona. Spain braced for more protests despite tentative signs that the sides may be seeking to defuse the crisis after Madrid offered a first apology to Catalans injured by police during their outlawed independence vote. (Agence France -Presse/Jorge Guerero)

T

he conflict in Catalonia, or the “Catalan Matter” as it is known in Spain, goes beyond a secessionist threat. It brings to light a much bigger problem for Spain and its democratic regime resulting from the political transition culminated in 1978 with the approval of the Spanish Constitution.

The fact that a regional parliament has decided to disobey the state’s legality, supported by two million people, tells us that the democratic legitimacy of the ’78 regime is being seriously questioned, at least in Catalonia.

The Catalan separatist movement, and some not pro-independence Catalans, consider the present territorial organization of the state (the “State of the Autonomies”) to be worn out and obsolete, unable to provide satisfactory results for its self-government aspirations.

Eleven years ago, the pro-independence forces obtained only 14 percent of the popular vote in the 2006 regional elections. In September 2015, they managed to get a whopping 48 percent of the Catalans and the majority in the Catalan Parliament. This implies a trend towards secession from Spain.

There are two significant events during these 11 years, which contributed to this change of heart.

First, in 2005 the Catalan Parliament, following what it is established in the Chapter VIII of the Spanish Constitution (Art. 147.3), presented a new Statute of Autonomy to the Spanish Parliament. The proposed Statute is the regional regulations that establish the competences and the levels of self-government of Spain’s Autonomous Communities.

The Catalan Statute came into effect after all the procedures were finished on June 18, 2006. A month later it was appealed in front of the Constitutional Court by opposition the Popular Party (PP). The resolution of the Court later declared 14 articles unconstitutional. The move represented a clear judicialization of a political issue that threatened the division of power and politicized the rule of law. A bigger implication is the message to Catalans that they would never get their way in Spain.

Second, the 2008 financial crisis brought up in Spain the clear deficiencies of the regime to safeguard the social and economic right of its citizens. The austerity measures imposed by the European Union implied severe cuts to the welfare state, which had been one of the strongest pillars and accomplishments of the 1978 regime. At the same time, numerous corruption scandals affecting most of the main political actors of the Spanish political system, including the royal family, were brought to light. As a result, a generalized feeling of hostility towards politics spread across the country.

In Catalonia, particularly, the secessionist forces utilized the cuts on the welfare state to suggest that in a free Catalonia that could manage its own finances, these would not take place or they would have a much less severe impact. The “Spain steals from us” (“Espanya ens roba”) discourse earned supporters and strengthened the pro-independence forces which were seen as the real alternative to the well-established political actors of the “obsolete” regime.

To make a long story short, in Catalonia, more than 70 percent of its citizens want to be questioned about the current fitting of their region in Spain, and nearly 50 percent have disobeyed the Spanish law to accomplish just that.

The pro-independence forces, especially in the social and communal spheres, have been able to capitalize on the political disaffection and have managed to mobilize the Catalan citizens recurrently since the Constitutional Court resolution in 2010. The Spanish State has underestimated the magnitude of the conflict and has reduced it to a secessionist threat organized by certain elites that have a particular agenda and the collaboration of a group of radicals, and it believes that by imposing the law on these people it will solve the problem.

However, the Catalan Matter is very much a Spanish Matter. The 1978 regime is losing its democratic legitimacy because it is politicizing the judiciary power and turning political issues into legal matters; and because it has allowed corruption to spread all over the political system as high up as its highest institution while citizens see day after day their socio-economic rights reduced.

Indonesia could take a few notes on the Catalan Matter and pay some attention to the level of democratic legitimacy of the Reformasiregime.

First, the judicialization of politics, or in other words the use of the judiciary power to get rid of political rivals, is a dangerous threat to the legitimacy of a regime. The rule of law is very important, but so it is the separation of powers.

Second, the subsidized nature of Indonesia’s territorial organization of the state is a strong mechanism to keep the country together because it keeps local elites engaged with the center and with a “common” national project. However, corruption can very much harm such mechanism and consequently the whole regime if its political viability is questioned.

In Spain, the questioning of the 1978 legitimacy burst in a region; in Indonesia, because of the Reformasi regime’s tender age, the threat might come from populist forces that want to go back to more authoritarian practices.

It is in the hands of the political elites to respond to these threats with more politics and more democracy.

***

Joan Ricart obtained a PhD in political science from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He has been working on the Political System of Indonesia for 10 years now and in 2016 coordinated a publication entitled: Los Sistemas Políticos de España e Indonesia. Una perspectiva comparada; Editorial UOC; Barcelona, 2016 (ISBN: 978-84-9116-227-8).

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