Sewer politics
No one can deny that politics is often a dirty game riddled with lies and backstabbing in the pursuit of power. Unfortunately this toxic atmosphere can deter those with altruistic motives from entering the profession to actually help the people they represent.
It can also have the effect of putting people off participating at even the most basic level: voting. Why should we vote when we cannot believe what anyone says anymore?
If you have been tainted by corruption, the easiest damage limitation exercise is to taint your rival with suspicion and point the finger back at them saying “I may be guilty but you are more.”
It’s sort of a grown-up version of the infantile riposte, “I know you are but what am I.”
Fatigue can set in as a result of the constant revelations of scandals to the extent that we no longer care which may be true or not, but this is precisely what those who are in power and acting illegitimately want.
So it should be deeply troubling when there is evidence that the government may be using the police to dig up dirt on their rivals.
The High Court is currently investigating the existence of a group of senior police officials who allegedly did precisely this, on behalf of the ministry for the interior under ex-prime minister Mariano Rajoy of the Partido Popular.
They were known, with the worst kind of irony, as the ‘patriotic brigade’, as if the greatest act of patriotism could be launching smear campaigns that are not even particularly concerned whether they are based on truth.
One of the police allegedly involved has already become synonymous in Spain with this kind of espionage at the highest level, José Manuel Villarejo, the ex-National Police chief who at the same time ran a private investigation firm used by very wealthy and influential clients.
Since November 2017 he has been in prison on remand while under judicial investigation for various offences, including bribery, revelation of secrets and money laundering.
During this time more and more details have emerged about those who allegedly made use of his services, or were targeted by them, implicating all sorts of people and organisations, from former King Juan Carlos I to BBVA bank.
The investigating judge is also probing papers seized by police internal affairs for evidence of any journalists who may have been paid or rewarded for leaking illegally obtained information.
The political targets of the patriotic brigade were initially Catalan pro-independence politicians over the course of three years from 2012 to 2015.
An anonymous, undated police report was leaked just before the 2012 Catalan regional elections, which alleged ex-president Jordi Pujol was hiding €137 million in Swiss bank accounts from illegal payments for public contracts, and also implicated his successor Artur Mas.
This was followed by another report in 2013 which revealed that the Pujol family had tens of millions in Andorra, which Jordi claimed without evidence had been inherited from his father.
The political shenanigans continued after new left-wing party Podemos surprised everyone by winning 69 seats in the December 2015 general elections.
The following month claims that Podemos had received illegal finding from Iran was published on the websites OKdiario and El Confidencial, based on a police investigation started before the elections but which made no official accusations for another two months following the leak.
While party leader Pablo Iglesias was being paid to appear on an Iranian-owned television channel, nothing about this was found to warrant prosecution.
Separate legal action based on the reports was brought against Podemos by the far-right union Manos Limpias but shelved by the Supreme Court due to lack of evidence.
Police chiefs even went to Venezuela in 2016 to ask an exminister who had served under Hugo Chávez for evidence of Podemos receiving illegal funding.
Then not long before that year’s general election, OKdiario was given fake documents from a police informer supposedly showing that Podemos had been paid €272,000 by Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s government.
The bank in the Grenadine islands that was on the statements confirmed they were not genuine and it turned out that the informer was a Venezuelan who was granted a special residency permit in return by the ministry for the interior.
Villarejo also turned out to have given OKdiario a private conversation between a group of senior Podemos members which referred to Sr Iglesias making sexist comments.
He said he had got it from the editor of the magazine Interviú after a memory card from a stolen mobile phone belonging to one of Sr Iglesias’ aides was sent to them anonymously, although they had refused to publish it.
All this is the tip of the iceberg surrounding Villerejo and the patriotic brigade, and it will take the courts a long time to get to the bottom of it.
Podemos have referred to these activities as ‘the sewers of the state’ and it is hard to disagree, because nobody wins from this kind of gutter politics, it merely feeds a dangerous apathy that enables those responsible for it to flourish.