The party people (1)

Political parties are unpopular; they are subject to suspicion, although they retain some appeal among some people. For those who feel a natural inclination toward some form of collective action during their university years, this is the stage of great biographical beginnings, although with it they risk early professionalization in politics, a premature specialization that the youth branches of the same parties encourage by their mere existence.

Professionals with a touch of civic sense are also exploring the political arena, those who believe they have something to contribute to addressing public issues they understand intimately through their work, aware that political parties are the ideal social forum for social reform, more so than the third sector or corporate associations. But the current party structure, almost exclusively territorial since the first general elections, shuns the professional organization of its members and neglects to attract outside talent to its organization.

Lost militancy is recovered in episodes of acute rivalry, as is happening now.

Aware of their unpopularity, a majority of them resorted to the purifying Jordan of primaries. The Socialist Party preempted this, resisting holding them for twenty years; it was the most obvious way to fulfill the democratization that the Constitution demands of all of them. Today, the damage of this direct appeal to the base is clear, since the winner concentrates in himself a power far superior to that of his colleagues combined and, should he become prime minister, becomes an untouchable leader.

Sometimes, part of the lost membership of parties is regained during episodes of acute rivalry between them, as is currently happening; then, applications flow again from people who want nothing more than to lend a hand at party offices and polling stations on election day. This must be largely the case with the thousand monthly memberships of Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party.

The truth is that democracy is welcome, but not party-based democracy. Too many people now distrust our parties for any social function, if not for the fact that they are considered centers of ill-treatment and public employment agencies.

However, experiencing the "states general" that are congresses up close, one sees that they harbor a great deal of submerged internal talent; like icebergs, the outstanding part of that social mass that is political parties ordinarily gravitates toward public communication, except on these occasions during conventions and congresses, which shift their external inertia toward the internal sphere of their middle echelons, convened under the principles of plural and reasoned discussion. The new party laws are right to require that their programmatic assemblies be held every two years, or even more frequently.