Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Trust in Institutions

  • Spanish Judges Block Senate Debate to Replace Them

    Constitutional Court Madrid Spain
    Constitutional Court in Madrid, Spain at night (Europa Press)

    Conservatives have plunged Spain into what Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez describes as “an unprecedented situation in our democracy” and Catalonia’s El Nacional calls “the biggest institutional challenge between powers in Spain since the attempted coup d’état of 1981.”

    “You have silenced parliament,” Sánchez told opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo on Wednesday, who convinced a majority of the Constitutional Court’s justices to block a Senate debate about reforms that would allow Sánchez to replace four of them.

    The six justices in the majority were all appointed by Feijóo’s People’s Party. The five progressive justices sided with Sánchez, a social democrat.

    According to Germany’s Die Zeit, it is the first time since the return of democracy to Spain that the Constitutional Court has intervened in the legislative process.

    Opposition has blocked Sánchez’ nominees

    Since Sánchez became prime minister in 2018, the right-wing opposition has vetoed all his judicial nominations, which require supermajorities in both chambers of parliament.

    In an attempt to break the deadlock, Sánchez proposed to reduce the required majority for Constitutional Court appointments down from three-fifths.

    The proposal passed the lower house with the support of left-wing and Basque and Catalan separatist parties.

    The same coalition abolished the crimes for which Catalonia’s leading separatists were prosecuted when the People’s Party was last in power. Sánchez had already pardoned those found guilty of sedition and misuse of public funds by organizing an independence referendum in defiance of the Constitutional Court.

    Feijóo on Wednesday accused Sánchez of “perfecting his obedience to the Catalan independence movement.”

    Conservatives are alarmed

    Catalan nationalism has become the primary motivator of the Spanish right. Whereas Sánchez hopes concessions to the Catalans will convince a majority to remain in Spain, conservatives smell treason and believe the only way to prevent Catalan secession is to crack down.

    Conservatives are also alarmed by Sánchez’ expansion of abortion rights, legalization of euthanasia and recognition of transgenders. Some cling to the hope that the Constitutional Court might overturn those reforms.

    Judges refuse to recuse

    The right may be able to outsmart Sánchez for another year, when elections are due. Polls predict a People’s Party victory. To many Spanish voters, concessions to Catalans are worse than a judicial power grab.

    That would require four justices — three conservatives, one progressive — to remain in office for another year. Their mandates expired in June.

    The government had asked those justices whose mandates were affected by the reforms to recuse themselves from hearing Feijóo’s challenge but they refused, in effect extending their terms to vote against their replacement.

  • Conservatives Win Battle for Spanish Courts

    Spanish Supreme Court Madrid
    Seat of the Spanish Supreme Court in Madrid, November 27, 2012 (Wikimedia Commons)

    Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’ left-wing government has withdrawn reforms of the body that appoints Spain’s judges, including those of the Supreme Court.

    The climbdown is a victory for conservatives, who have for years blocked the appointment and elevation of more progressive judges through their control of the General Council of the Judiciary.

    The council’s five-year term expired in December 2018, six months after Sánchez took power from the conservative People’s Party, but it has continued to name judges to Spain’s highest courts.

    Supermajorities of three out of five lawmakers are required in both the Congress of Deputies and the Senate to install a new council, giving the center-right People’s Party and far-right Vox (Voice) — which together hold 40 percent of the seats — a veto. (more…)

  • Fragmented Dutch Parliament Lacks Experience

    Dutch parliament The Hague
    Dutch lawmakers listen to a debate in parliament in The Hague, September 29, 2020 (Tweede Kamer)

    Regular readers know I’m not a fan of two-party democracy. It reduces politics to simplistic either-or choices. It encourages parties to radicalize their supporters and appeal to the extremes rather than the center. Multiparty democracy, by contrast, engenders moderation and compromise.

    Multiparty democracies are superior on almost every metric: their voters show higher trust in government and each other; their electoral systems are more responsive to changes in public opinion; their economies are more competitive and their societies less divisive.

    But there is a tradeoff. When voters aren’t loyal — which is itself a good thing; they should judge parties on their performance — turnover in parliament can be high, which robs it of experience and expertise. (more…)

  • Trump Needlessly Disparages Postal Voting

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump attends a meeting in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018 (Office of the President of the Republic of Finland/Juhani Kandell)

    The coronavirus pandemic will likely necessitate mail-in voting on an unprecedented scale in the United States.

    At least 4.8 million Americans have been infected with the disease. Almost 160,000 have died. America has 4 percent of the world’s population but so far suffered 23 percent of the world’s COVID-19 fatalities.

    With the virus showing no sign of abating, requiring 100+ million Americans to vote in person, indoors, would be hugely irresponsible.

    Yet President Donald Trump disparages the best alternative. (more…)

  • Democrats Don’t Have to Take Sanders’ Delegate Complaints Seriously

    Democratic National Convention Philadelphia Pennsylvania
    Delegates listen to a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 25, 2016 (DNCC/Chris Frommann)

    The New York Times asked 93 of the 771 Democratic Party officials who will be automatically seated at the convention in July — the so-called “superdelegates” — if they would vote for Bernie Sanders if the socialist emerged with a plurality, but not a majority, of the pledged delegates.

    Only nine said they would.

    Sanders’ supporters are predictably up in arms, arguing the party “establishment” is conspiring to overturn “the will of the people”.

    Some are threatening to sit out the election in November if their man doesn’t prevail.

    Imagine being so safe and comfortable that you could stomach another four years of children being separated from their parents at the border and killed in detention, American citizens of color being harassed by immigration authorities, institutions being demolished, the rule of law turned into a dead letter and the liberal world order torn to shreds in the service of Vladimir Putin if the only alternative is voting for your second-best candidate. I’m not terribly well-versed in the rhetoric of the social-justice left, but I believe this is what they call “privilege”? (more…)

  • Republicans Are Destroying Institutions to Save Their Party

    United States Capitol Washington
    United States Capitol in Washington DC at night, September 18, 2014 (Thomas Hawk)

    Republicans in the United States are ramping up their attacks on norms and institutions in pursuit of partisan interest. That is a danger to the whole country.

    Journalists and universities have for decades been disparaged by the right as hopelessly biased to the point where only 15 percent of Republicans trust the mass media anymore, down from 46 percent two decades ago, and 73 percent believe higher education is going in the wrong direction.

    The party now has the Justice Department, the FBI, the courts and arguably the Constitution in its sights. (more…)

  • Even Parliament Must Make Way for Brexit

    Elizabeth Tower London England
    Elizabeth Tower of the Palace of Westminster in London, England, February 23, 2017 (Unsplash/Kate Krivanec)

    To its supporters, Brexit is all that matters. If it means plunging the country into deep uncertainty, undermining the public’s trust in institutions, trashing Britain’s alliances, causing Northern Ireland and Scotland to leave the United Kingdom, even destroying the Conservative Party — so be it.

    The latest victim of this obsession is parliamentary democracy.

    In the battle between popular and parliamentary sovereignty, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has sided with the former and suspended Parliament, so it will have almost no time to prevent the United Kingdom from crashing out of the European Union without an exit agreement. (more…)

  • Down in the Polls, Sanders Echoes Trump on Media Bias

    Bernie Sanders
    Vermont senator Bernie Sanders gives a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, January 9, 2016 (Gage Skidmore)

    First, Bernie Sanders suggested the Democratic Party teamed up on him in 2016 to deny him the presidential nomination. (Of a party of which he is not even a member.)

    Now he is suggesting The Washington Post is giving him negative coverage because he has been critical of its owner, Jeff Bezos.

    America already has one party that regularly calls the legitimacy of institutions like universities, the FBI and NATO into doubt. It doesn’t need Democrats to do the same. (more…)

  • Brexiteers to Parliament: Drop Dead

    British parliament London
    Aerial view of the Palace of Westminster in London, England (iStock/Robert Ingelhart)

    So much for the claim that Brexit was about restoring the sovereignty of British institutions.

    According to a ComRes poll published in The Telegraph on Monday, more Britons would support Prime Minister Boris Johnson using any means necessary to take Britain out of the European Union than would oppose him — even if it meant suspending Parliament.

    Of those with an opinion on the question, 54 percent of respondents said they agreed Johnson should do whatever it takes and prevent lawmakers from blocking Brexit. 46 percent disagreed.

    If undecideds are included, the figures are 44 percent “agree” and 37 percent “disagree”. (more…)

  • Sanders Should Stop Undermining Trust in the Democratic Party

    Bernie Sanders
    Vermont senator Bernie Sanders gives a speech in Brooklyn, New York, April 8, 2016 (Timothy Krause)

    Bernie Sanders is at it again, alleging that the 2016 Democratic primary was “rigged” against him.

    It wasn’t, and Sanders should stop saying so. At a time when Donald Trump is calling the legitimacy of academia, science, the news media, the FBI, NATO and other multilateral organizations into question, the last thing the left needs to do is undermine trust in more institutions. (more…)

  • Election in Georgia Clouded by Racial and Voting Controversy

    One of the most closely watched elections on Tuesday is in Georgia, where Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp are competing for the governorship.

    Abrams led Democrats in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017 and is the first-ever female African American gubernatorial nominee of a major political party in the United States.

    Kemp has been the secretary of state of Georgia since 2010. That puts him in charge of overseeing the very election he is hoping to win. (more…)

  • Kavanaugh Nomination Erodes Supreme Court’s Legitimacy

    United States Supreme Court
    Supreme Court of the United States in Washington DC (iStock)

    Republicans’ determination to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court marks an escalation of the politicization of the judiciary in the United States.

    Kavanaugh faces unanimous opposition from Democrats due to allegations of sexual assault, his extreme views on presidential power (Kavanaugh does not believe a sitting president can be indicted or tried) and his partisanship. (more…)

  • Republicans Are Playing with Fire by Disparaging the FBI

    Hoover Building Washington
    FBI headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, in Washington DC, October 7, 2016 (Unsplash/Jack Young)

    Having undermined Americans’ trust in the media, the courts, public education, science and Congress, Republicans are now turning on one of the few institutions that still command wide respect: the FBI.

    In their desperation to save Donald Trump from scandal, Republicans are concocting wild conspiracy theories of FBI agents scheming to overturn the 2016 election.

    This hysteria will not be without consequence. When partisans become convinced that the institutions of government have been taken over by the other side, they stop listening to them. When those institutions are law enforcement, the dangers are obvious. (more…)

  • Republicans Broke American Politics in These Three Ways

    Washington DC
    Washington DC at night (Pixabay/skeeze)

    Political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein argue in The New York Times that the Democratic and Republican Parties don’t share the blame for the sorry state American politics are in.

    Republicans are the ones who broke American politics, they write, in three ways:

    1. By demonizing government: Republicans have for decades attacked and dismantled institutions and flouted the norms of lawmaking, undermining the public’s trust in government.
    2. By opposing Barack Obama every step of the way: Even when he proposed policies Republicans once supported, like an individual health-insurance mandate. This radicalized conservative voters, who were told Republicans could bring the president to his knees if only they won a majority in Congress. The Obama effect had an ominous twist: an undercurrent of racism that was embodied in the “birther” movement led by Donald Trump.
    3. By creating a conservative echo chamber: From the rise of talk radio in the 1980s, Fox News in the 90s, right-wing blogs in the early 2000s and social media in our time, conservatives have created a media ecosystem in which “alternative facts” thrive and hostility to the “establishment”, immigrations and Democrats boosts ratings. (more…)

  • The American Culture Wars Are Officially a Strategic Threat

    Donald Trump
    Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gives a speech in Phoenix, Arizona, October 29, 2016 (Gage Skidmore)

    Donald Trump campaign people are going to jail.

    This isn’t quite the fall of the Trumpian house of cards. Paul Manafort’s indictment is very specific to him and his work in Ukraine. More information must come out before we can be certain this will lead to the White House. While the revelations of George Papadopoulos create the strongest link yet, they have not produced an indictment to date.

    Yet there is an essential tale here: for the first time in modern American history, a foreign power has substantially interfered with a political campaign. It’s not that others haven’t tried. The Soviet Union tried several times to back favored candidates, especially in the turbulent 1960s and 70s. But in those Cold War cases, American candidates refused the help.

    This is the first time it looks like someone said yes.

    What changed? (more…)