Tuesday, December 1, 2015

The Woman Who Wants To Rule Spain

Helen Mukoro

She may not have had the time or the media wherewithal to hype herself up for the event. So, not many people knew that Helen Mukoro—a naturalized Spanish citizen of Nigerian descent—did, in fact, shatter a significant but little-noticed barrier in May this year when she became the first woman and the first non-white Spanish citizen to run for the office of mayor of Dénia, a key tourist city in the autonomous  community of Valencia. What makes the event noteworthy even today is that though Spain is not an openly racist country—and has no xenophobic party with parliamentary representation—blacks, in the Spanish mind is still synonymous with domestic work, poverty, and lawlessness. Helen Mukoro is the exact opposite of this portrait. Vigorous, cultured, and flamboyant, with a rather spectacular afro hair, she runs a legal firm and has worked as a legal consultant for the Red Cross in Spain, as well as being the author of more than 21 books.     

She entered the mayoral race on the platform of Unión De Todos (“Union of All”), a political party she founded three months earlier. While the move was unprecedented and to some extent, far-fetched, it was by no means uncharacteristic of a lady who migrated from her native Delta State in Nigeria to Spain in 1992 at the age of 23 and went on to study Law at the Spanish National University in Alicante, acquiring along the way post-graduate degrees and certificates in Criminology, Social Education, and Forensic Psychology. With little time at her disposition, following a legal tussle to determine the legitimacy of her candidacy on the grounds of citizenship, she went into the race, not for the fun of participating, but to win. It is important to note that while dual citizenship is recognized by the Spanish constitution, a naturalized citizen, however, is expected to renounce his/her original citizenship to become a Spanish national. Mukoro was said to have successfully proved that she had renounced her Nigerian citizenship and thus qualified to run for office in Spain. She lost.

Mukoro At a party meeting
Interestingly, losing the mayoral race did not discourage her; the process, in fact, galvanized her to up the ante. So, when news broke that she had declared her candidacy for the presidency of Spain, it seemed like a big deal—the ultimate coup de grâce to cynics—except that no one can be president of Spain, not even someone whose citizenship is based upon the principle of jus sanguinis (right of blood). That is because Spain—officially the Kingdom of Spain—does not have a president. The only time in the country’s history that the official title of President of Spain existed was during the Second Spanish Republic between 1931 and 1939. Today, Spain—the sixth largest economy in Europe—is a constitutional monarchy with the king as head of state and the prime minister as head of government.

King Felipe VI & Queen Letizia
It was therefore a little surprising when Mukoro, in response to a reporter’s question, “Why do you want to be president of Spain,” during a late summer interview with Lagos-based Punch newspapers, said “There are so many reasons for my presidential ambition...” rather than explain to the reporter that there was no such title as President of Spain. It is not clear if this was an oversight or sheer ignorance of the goal she had set herself. In Spain, when electorates go to the polls for national elections, they do not elect a president because there are no presidential candidates to choose from; they elect political parties. And the leader of the party with the most vote then asks for a parliamentary vote of confidence which, if won, automatically makes him prime minister, eligible to form a government. Now, aside from the erroneous representation of Mukoro’s candidacy and/or ambition, what are her chances of winning a national election in Spain?

Inspirational speaker
The answer might lie in the political structure of the country. Spain has a multi-party system at both national and regional levels. Historically, the country has been ruled almost exclusively by the two predominant political parties—the center right People’s Party (or as it’s known in Spain, Partido Popular, PP)  and the center left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (or Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE). In practice, though, the Spanish electorates’ perennially unresolved conflict between disillusionment with politicians and attachment to ideologies, has always made it difficult for either of the two dominant parties to achieve an electoral majority in both houses of parliament or the bicameral Cortes Generales, made up of the Congress of Deputies (which is national in structure) and the Senate (which is populated by regional representation). 

Current Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy
Like in Italy, whose political structure mirrors that of Spain, this difficulty in obtaining absolute majority generally gives rise to the formation of coalitions with smaller (sometimes regional) parties in order to garner the necessary votes for governance. Consequently, these regional parties, some of which are strong in autonomous communities like Catalonia and the Basque Country end up becoming the decisive factor in the creation of the national government. Over the years, these smaller parties have grown not only in strength but in number as well. And they closely follow the PP & PSOE in national opinion polls.

Pablo Iglesias
But last year, as a wave of populist movements—both rightwing and leftwing—swept across Europe, a new element entered the political fray in Spain, posing the biggest threat yet to the country’s major political parties. It is, unfortunately, not Helen Mukoro’s Unión De Todos but a phenomenal movement called Podemos (meaning “We Can”), founded in March 2014 by Pablo Iglesias, a member of the European parliament and former lecturer in political science at the Complutense University of Madrid. Created in the aftermath of the anti-austerity protests that rocked most of Europe last year (known as the 15-M Movement or Indignant Movement in Spain), Podemos, a leftwing party, seeks to address the same issues that Helen Mukoro, in interviews and campaign declarations, touts as her platform and strong suit—inequality, unemployment and economic malaise. But while Mukoro’s Unión De Todos is yet to make any significant impact outside her region, Podemos’ appeal, from the onset, was so strong that it became the third largest party at the national level within the first 20 days of its existence.

Spain is expected to hold national elections later this month (December 2015) to
Campaign Rally
elect a new parliament and one of the issues that will most likely sway voters is the issue of immigration, a major concern of Mukoro. While it might seem that her favorable stance on the issue might pull the immigrant population to her side, immigrants in Spain, unfortunately, do not have a right to vote. And though most candidates with little or no chance of winning at all, stay in the race to create enough buzz to get them noticed for possible ministerial appointments, Mukoro doesn’t even have the support of many Nigerians in Spain. A feud with the Nigerian embassy in Madrid (due to a comment she made about the conduct of certain Nigerians of the Igbo tribe tarnishing the country’s image), has remained unresolved and has created a lot of bad blood between her and the Igbo community in Spain.

Outside Nigerian Embassy in Spain
Furthermore, Mukoro’s Unión De Todos party failed to get a mention in a recent Celeste Tel poll for El Diario, which showed that contrary to expectations, no party will emerge from the December election with an outright majority, making a race for coalition building a possibility. Political watchers predict two possible scenarios—a coalition of the ruling PP and Ciudadanos, or the PSOE and Podemos. But as both seem to show a draw on 156 seats, a third possibility is foreseen and that is an alliance between the PSOE, Podemos and the two (regional) Catalan parties currently under the Junts Pel Sí ("Together For Yes") separatist banner in Catalonia (CDC and ERC). A coalition of this nature, which is not a remote possibility, would deliver an overall number of 176 seats required for a majority in the 350-seat Spanish Congress. And with it, parties with less than 1% score, would be as good as extinguished. 
Mukoro

So, where does that leave Helen Mukoro? Maybe the absence of her Unión De Todos party in the graph below says it all.
Party
% Vote
Seats
Popular Party (PP)
32.0%
134-137
Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE)
27.4%
116-120
Podemos
12.2%
31-36
Ciudadanos
10.0%
17-19
Convergencia (CDC)
2.1%
10-11
Republican Catalan Left (ERC)
1.57%
8-9


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