Recently the president of one of the Spanish autonomous communities–essentially regions–has been indicted on a count of what we could call, trying to be precise, a form of improper bribing. The story has its amusing details, given how the person in question has been denying having anything to do with the people who allegedly bribed him, then went onto denying having received gifts. Now that the indictment has been processed, and given he belongs to the partido popular–essentially a right-wing coalition of conservatives and neoliberals–the segment of the media who has supported the PP and will do so to the end has started changing tack. Since the evidence seems to be undeniable, and the calls from the president–by name Francisco Camps, incidentally–to wait yet a bit more for the next procedural step so that his innocence would at last be demonstrated beyond all doubt seem not to be believable anymore even by the base of the party, something new has had to be concocted, lest someone may get the completely incorrect idea that there was some sort of wrongdoing going on.
On this line there have been a handful of competing strategies, floated more or less simultaneously, while the relevant advisers do the necessary market research: On the one hand, the everyone does it strategy, which is not likely to function too well to mobilise a people tired of the same dirty politics, and may actually work against the PP, which has tried to create an image of being the exception, the only clean player in a pigsty; on the other hand, the everyone does it worse strategy, inaugurated by PP-friendly media, which may have a chance to fly if not for the fact that it has not been possible to point at worse in recent history, notwithstanding certain probably baseless allegations about subsidies in Andalucía which have not given rise to any indictments, and is actually undermined by the examples given by such PP notables as Rita Barberá, comparing the reception of gifts from private enterprises that got public contracts with the institutional gifts–canns of anchovies–bestowed by the president of Cantabria; but surely the boldest, and apparently the chosen strategy, is one we could baptise as it wasn’t wrong and the law should be changed accordingly strategy.
This assertion that receiving gifts as a public servant is normal, and not only is but should be, flies against a lot of the rhetoric that has been coming from the PP in recent years, as well as being clearly self-interested, and contrary to the stance of a party that claims to support, alone and surrounded by knaves, the elusive rule of law: the suggestion that the Penal Code should be changed right after one of their first swords got speared by it, is so obviously partial and disingenuous that I must confess a certain admiration for the boldness and shamelessness of the gesture.
The article involved is article 426 of the Penal Code, which reads thus:
The authority or public functionary that shall accept a gift or present that would be offered in consideration to their function or in order to obtain an action that is not forbidden by law, shall incur the penalty of a fine of 3 to 6 months.
It is possible to claim that this article is excessively rigorous with public servants, and that it should be relaxed. It is possible to claim that it should only be applied in cases in which the magnitude, or the involvement of the giver with the public functionary in question, are sufficient to justify the play of penal law. What’s not reasonable, nor credible, is that such an article should be derogated from the code.
There are other articles in the code which refer to bribes in the context of quid pro quo: a gift in exchange for an illegal act, a gift in exchange for an unjust act, a gift in exchange for an act that is due and must be done by the functionary, and a gift that is given in exchange for the omission of an act that is legally due by the functionary. These 4 instances of bribery are clearly graver than that typified by article 426. Is the bribery of article 426 so minor that it should be ignored by the law, as the PP apologists wish us to believe? Well, put simply, no.
The fundamental reason why article 426 exists and should exist–and I would like to bring your attention to the fact that although PP reformed the Penal Code several times it never decided to change or anull article 426–is because this type of crime is by necessity committed by people who know reasonably well what they are doing, have means to hide it, and advisers to help them do so. It is therefore extremely difficult to prove one of the more qualified types: who in their right mind would leave incriminating written records of the promises made for which gifts were offered? This is the reason why this article should continue to be applied: it would be otherwise all too easy to hide the other types under the legal hole left by its anullment. In addition, let’s be real here: why would public functionaries receive gifts from those who contract with the state in consideration of their function? Seriously, if not anything else a case must be made that such gifts distort the unconscious impressions of the functionary and will lead them to award contracts under preferential conditions, but we don’t need to be so subtle to believe that when a profit-seeking agent gives something to a public functionary they are expecting something in return.
It may never be possible to prove that Camps was the author of one of the qualified types of bribery, although the business which allegedly bought him the gifts has been involved in exceedingly irregular actions with other public functionaries–what a coincidence, from the PP also. This in itself would, in my mind, create a pretty strong presumption. However, Camps’ innocence, as everyone else’s, is presumed in law, and it is the prosecution’s job to destroy this presumption at trial if the evidence exists and can be obtained. What’s not at all credible, on the light of already existing evidence, is to hold that Camps had nothing to do with this, that he paid for the gifts, that he didn’t know these people–a conversation has been recorded in which he told the generous patron something to the effect of “my friend, I love you to bits”–and similar lines of bullshit that are being peddled by the rightwing press.
Tags: bribery, camps, corruption, partido popular, politics, PP, press, propaganda, scandal, spain, valencia
