Valladolid, Jul 7 (EFE).- The political discussion about the electoral debates is one of the classics of each campaign in Spain, where the idea of regulating its organization by law continues not to catch on, nor between the communities, since only three territories -Castilla y León, the Basque Country and Murcia- have binding regulations for their holding before the regional elections.
When the electoral campaign begins and three days after the Prime Minister and PSOE candidate for re-election, Pedro Sánchez, and the PP candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, meet face to face in a televised debate before the elections of the 23J, the EFE Agency has reviewed the existing regulations on this matter and the different formulas applied at the regional level.
In most cases it occurs as at the state level. The parties have left to their own inspiration, will and negotiation whether or not this democratic exercise takes place in the campaigns in fourteen of the seventeen autonomies, although in some cases they are referred as a reference to the criteria applied by the corresponding Electoral Board when discrepancies arise over the way to organize them.
The same is not the case in Castilla y León, the Basque Country and Murcia, where in a more or less extensive and detailed manner they have included in their electoral regulations clauses that ensure the holding of these debates.
CASTILE AND LEON
After decades without electoral debates, in 2016 it was Juan Vicente Herrera, then president of the Junta de Castilla y León, who took the step of modifying the autonomous electoral law -within a series of reforms on transparency and senior positions- to convert into mandatory at least two debates before the elections.
The PP had just lost its historic absolute majority in this land and Herrera, who had to agree on his investiture and his budgets with Ciudadanos, chose to take steps in the direction of greater citizen participation and more transparency from politicians.
Specifically, in terms of electoral debates, the norm approved since then implies that the candidates of the formations with their own parliamentary group in the Cortes must hold at least two public debates during the electoral campaign.
“Debates are always good in a democracy,” summed up during the presentation of this reform one of its architects, the then regional vice president, José Antonio de Santiago-Juárez.
To develop this obligation, the Board later approved an order to regulate the Electoral Debate Commission, made up of professionals from the media, to whom the regional government entrusts its programming and organization.
BASQUE COUNTRY
In the Basque Country, the latest reform of the autonomous electoral law served to introduce the sixth point of article 81, which provides that the media dependent on the Basque Government will broadcast at least one debate on general policy in each of the official languages .
Candidates from all the political formations that had obtained representation in the previous elections to the Basque Parliament must participate in them.
In this case, the parties settle their differences in criteria in the Board of Directors of the Basque public radio television, where they are represented and where they channel the details for the organization of the debates.
MURCIA
The electoral law of the Region of Murcia regulates the holding of debates by providing that at least one must be scheduled in public media with territorial coverage in the community.
The law also says that it must be scheduled with the participation of those who head all the lists presented that already had parliamentary representation, although it does not close the door to holding another one with representatives of all the proclaimed candidacies.
All these debates will be governed by the principles of equal opportunities and equity, and the rules of organization and operation must be approved by the Regional Electoral Board.
PROPOSALS TO REGULATE THEM
The current debate on electoral debates was ‘inaugurated’ on June 5 by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, when he surprised by proposing a weekly face-to-face with Feijóo every Monday until the 23J elections, which was subsequently rejected by the PP, until leaving it only in a single debate that will be broadcast this Monday by the Atresmedia group -A3 and La Sexta-.
In the course of this discussion about the number and format, it has given time for Núñez Feijóo to advocate regulating electoral debates through a “legal provision” and guaranteeing them outside of partisan interests, something on which he has also shown The leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, is a partisan, although it will be necessary to see if these proposals materialize during the next legislature or if we will have to wait for a new electoral call to take up this issue again.
Oscar R. Window