Few clear examples exist in Spanish politics of the boomerang effect – increasingly studied by experts and more disregarded by advisers – than the one carried out by Antonio Hernández Mancha in March 1987, when he led a motion of no confidence against Felipe González who it was born doomed to failure. Not in vain the PSOE enjoyed an absolute majority in the Congress of Deputies.
It was evident that the initiative did not aspire to progress, but that it should be a springboard for the future candidate for the presidency of the Government by Alianza Popular, a young lawyer practically unknown outside of Andalusia (although born in Badajoz). Spokesman for the party in the Andalusian Parliament, Hernández Mancha had become AP president in February of that same year after the resignation of Manuel Fraga and after defeating Miguel Herrero and Rodríguez de Miñón in the party congress.
Not being a deputy in the Cortes, maintaining a face to face with Felipe González seemed impossible beyond the crossing of statements in the media, so without thinking twice, the new AP president threw the blanket over his head and raised the motion of no confidence that should allow him to enjoy a golden opportunity in Congress.
Embracing neoliberalism in vague government proposals that had barely been debated within the party and relying on a social confrontation that did not come at all from conservative sectors, Hernández Mancha stood before Parliament to be seen. Even anticipating that his initiative would have no route. This is clear in his presentation speech, which we offer excerpted.
His face to face not with Felipe González, but with the vice president, Alfonso Guerra, cannot exactly be described as brilliant. It was not even done in his day, since the alliance leader had not even dedicated himself to winning over the conservative press to his cause in another serious mistake in political strategy. Although that was not the worst, but the blunders that happened to him in the debate.
First, the candidate confused the dates on which Francisco Fernández Ordóñez was minister, first with the UDC and then with the PSOE, a fact that Felipe González himself did not hesitate to correct. Later, in an allusion to Adolfo Suárez that he pretended to be ingenious, he attributed to Santa Teresa de Ávila some verses by Lope de Vega. The former president did not hesitate to correct it either.
Suárez was precisely the second rival that Hernández Mancha intended to face to take over the centrist space. But it was also in vain, since the CDS leader only responded by making allusions to the AP leader to point out his shameful mistake.
As of the motion, the leadership of Hernández Mancha at the head of Alianza Popular was always questioned by the sector that had supported Herrero de Miñón, which included José María Aznar, who three months after the motion won the regional elections in Castilla y León and took over the presidency of the Junta in coalition with the CDS.
Faced with the drift that the formation was taking, Fraga himself decided to take the reins again to start a re-founding process in which his inexperienced president was redundant, who did not hesitate to present his resignation less than two years after his election.
“Mr. president:
”Although I may incur in unforgivable heterodoxy, I cannot resist the temptation to make a comment, from the outset, that coincides with the epilogue of my government program. Precisely, the last paragraph of my government program made the teachings, doctrines, principles, arguments and criteria contained therein available to whomever it may concern to fix what you, gentlemen of the Socialist Party, are killing, in some cases inevitably .
“Precisely because we are not zealous guardians of our political patrimony, but we make it available to the public interest, it is for this reason that in the event –probably the case– of not winning this motion of no confidence, I have the same conviction, Mr. President, that the that you were embargoed on similar dates in May 1980, no matter how hard your eminent coryphae, Mr. Alfonso Guerra, tried to prove otherwise from constitutionalist approaches.
”But I have seen you so concerned about the political situation that the Spanish street is suffering, I offer you – I do not charge you royalties – our program, when we vote on this motion of censure, that I know a priori that we are going to lose, but I do from a singular and enormous skepticism.
“If you want to listen to it so that this plenary session has a didactic character and they learn something that can be useful to them, bless God! But I tell you that my skepticism lies in the fact that liberal approaches, like the ones I defend in my program, put them available to those of you who are still socialists is the same as putting a television in front of the eyes of a poor blind man.
”Whether you ladies believe it or not, I have to tell you that I am not claiming, with this motion of censure from the Popular Group, neither an act of notoriety nor boastfulness, nor an act of emulation, much less an electoral claim. No, gentlemen of the majority. We claim just the opposite; We intend to fulfill two aspirations, one expressed by Mr. González, when he denounced that much of the violence in the street was due to the lack of an adequate parliamentary vehicle to resolve these complaints, and I gladly attend to his request.
”Our motive for presenting the motion of censure has been, as someone commented, that the opposition in a democracy take place in the democratic channels of Parliament and that it does not have to be done by a man with crutches breaking lampposts in the streets and then complaining the rulers saying that someone is looking for a dead man. You are beginning to do this catastrophizing by simply glossing over a social situation that is decomposing.
”If now it turns out that it is reactionary catastrophizing of the first group of the opposition to call things by their name, may God come and see! If now it turns out that it is trying to defend the prestige of the institutions by taking the debates to the realm of democracy and popular sovereignty, as is this Congress of Deputies, may God come and see! If the political option that I lead at this moment is reactionary, let me tell you that the socialism that you lead is caveman by necessity.
”As the President of the Government will have frequently verified in his current solitude, if when he gets up in the morning in Moncloa and picks up the teletypes of the latest conflicts, national or foreign, that in his responsibility as ruler he has to undertake, he considers think of other colleagues from other nations in our geographical, historical and cultural environment, you will realize that in Germany, after some socialist governments, the analogues of the Popular Coalition have had to take the baton and the responsibility of the Government, because if not only ruin could be expected from the maintenance of those political approaches.
”As such, the people voted for us all together. The same as England, France, Belgium, Finland and, to go to other areas, Canada, South Korea, the United States… It is no coincidence, Mr. González, that the decline of socialist ideology is a generalized constant throughout the world, because where the socialists ruled between the 60s and 70s, disaster, impoverishment, the inability to face the crisis first and then the new expansion, has been the general and constant rule.
”It is not by chance, I believe, that you are trying to convince the Spanish people that the policy you are pursuing is the only possible one. I am going to show you how false that statement is. I would rather we could verify here – and I consider myself, in a way, a representative of that way of thinking that triumphs throughout the free world – why in those countries average inflation is less than 3% and in Spain, despite all adjustments, continue to oscillate above 8%. Why unemployment is 6% in those countries and we are between 20%, 21% and 22%, according to the data handled by the Government itself.
“We have a State that tries to fix everything, that tries to touch everything, and State bodies in which the Executive prevails, impregnating each and every one of the others. The approach that from now on as a candidate for the Presidency, in the aforementioned terms, starts from a substantial difference with this socialist policy, and it is, neither more nor less, that we understand that the State is not a solution, but which is a problem, Mr. González.
“Our alternative is based, therefore, on the defense of freedoms against a State that has to become smaller and that its greatness be its efficiency and not excessive growth. We have to gradually remove the rigidity and absurd, ridiculous, paralyzing administrative interventions, and this in all areas, from economic to cultural, informative, educational, in the belief that freedom, which we write with a capital letter, Mr. González, it is the largest and most powerful creative force, which only needs the support and encouragement of the public powers to deploy all its unlimited possibilities and not, on the contrary, the socialist tendency that resists its control, its manipulation and its castrator dirigisme
”In foreign relations, my government would try to recover the prestige that we have lost today. Spanish foreign policy obliges us, Mr. President, to ensure that Spain, as the world’s 12th industrial power, aligns itself without hesitation alongside its friends and natural allies. You cannot be embracing a liberator today and another liberator-dictator tomorrow, because then we will end up entering the wave of discredit that our foreign policy of the present moment is well suffering.
”A fair tax policy requires distributing the tax burden, as is well known, among all citizens according to their economic capacity, which is far from being achieved today in Spain, despite the constant protests of progress and progressivism in such subject. As in Spain, since you govern, taxation has risen unstoppably, that is, all tax pressure, to speak right now that we are close to fiscal or tax justice in the proper sense is to speak of something non-existent.
”We would update and simplify our tax system and we would generate tax regularization measures, tending to increase public revenue without raising taxes, for which it is necessary to uncover hidden tax bases. We also want to modify the Personal Income Tax, to tax real income, excluding the necessary expenses to obtain it; replace the current treatment of the family unit, when the husband and wife work; raising the minimum exemptions to one million pesetas; the simplification of the tax rate, establishing a maximum ceiling of 40% and three differentiated rates, following the North American model in force.
”The Socialist Government has only considered Spain’s accession to the Common Market as a matter of State until the date on which the Accession Treaty was signed. Subsequently, the socialist government has dedicated itself to making political exploitation, presenting itself as the protagonist of our incorporation into Europe practically exclusively, but it has not provided the necessary means to manage our presence in the EEC and it is not adapting our productive structures and administrative nor our internal legal framework to the needs derived from our presence in the Community.
”My Government will carry out the defense of Spanish interests, without prejudice to maintaining the community spirit above all else, but not with these surrenders, quite the contrary. What my party wants is to add a Mediterranean dimension to a Community that up to now has suffered from an imbalance towards the north, and it also means, when we talk about the development of the Single European Act, that we cannot develop the single internal market without simultaneously correcting the interterritorial imbalances throughout the Community.
“If there is an issue, ladies and gentlemen, that must be considered State and in which the support and unity of all the parties around the Government, whatever it may be, is essential, it is evident that foreign policy stands out above all others. any others. And this is not only because these questions affect us all decisively and globally, but also because, furthermore, national interests tend to be permanent and lasting, as are external dangers and threats relatively constant.
”For this reason, it is time to begin to speak clearly and respond, once and for all, to a series of questions that are often taken for granted. Mr. President, is Spain sufficiently defended, or not? Mr. President, are the American bases necessary for national defense or not? Were they three years ago when the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the United States was renewed, or have circumstances changed since then? Are we, Mr. President, or not, militarily capable of assuming with our forces the functions currently carried out by the North Americans?
”Are we, Mr. President, willing to do so and consequently increase budgetary investments in Defense? What is the real cost of an alternative defense policy, if it exists? Is it a secondary matter that Spain can remain defenseless and that the southern flank of the western defensive system is also left unguarded? What will be, finally, the Spanish contribution to the common defense of the West? These issues are the ones we want to raise and the ones that should serve as the basis for directing a foreign policy that truly takes Spain’s national interests into account.
”For this reason, and based on these same considerations, we continue to be in favor, of course!, of the full integration of Spain into the military structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. We believe that our full integration into NATO would make it possible to establish, in all probability, a Spanish command in the territory of Gibraltar and thereby lay the first stone for the Spanish presence to achieve the return of the colony to our sovereignty, and that it does not follow us happening as has happened to the Minister of Foreign Affairs who, after promising them so happily when he spoke to us about the opening of the gate as a clear sign of progress in the British-Spanish bilateral negotiations, returns from his last trip to London like a rooster de Morón, without feathers and cackling.
”In the field of education, my Government will promote a State school pact, since it is a bad procedure for teaching to be constantly changing the laws. Consequently, through the school pact, we want to find a meeting place that is sufficiently acceptable to all, agreed upon and agreed upon so that in its main lines the fact that a party wins the elections does not imply a structural modification of the education system .
”This means that the objectives of educational policy for the current moment in Spain go through some minimal responses, among which we can highlight the following. First, guarantee full freedom to choose the type of education you want by committing ourselves, to this end, to ratify the first additional protocol of the European Convention for the Safeguarding of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, signed by Spain on February 23 of 1978 and which has not yet been ratified.
”In my program, it is about establishing the school bonus in such a way that the public authorities will make said bonus available to the family, which consists of the amount of the actual average cost module of the school post so that parents can invest in the school of your choice. In addition to offering quality education that materializes in the following objectives, because education cannot be distributed in independent and disproportionate watertight compartments.
”The articulation of the educational system, professional training and employment of young people must be the object of a global response from society. And in my opinion, if something stands out as original in our program it is the emphasis that must be placed on professional training, which has been the victim of serious setbacks in recent years and which is one of the reasons why we understand that young people Those who are convinced that social advancement can only be achieved between high school and university could have an even more economically profitable way out through professional training, but a different approach has been encouraged, ladies and gentlemen.
”To continue in what are areas of throbbing social interest and arriving at what health is, we will say that our program is fundamentally based on the antithesis of the ideas that the socialist power is imparting. The famous Health Law, the very happy approaches that you were going to make to end the queues, to improve the provision and quality of the service, to lower costs, everything has been resolved in a reform that you have done badly for your design and that, furthermore, it has been done not outside but against the health personnel themselves, who must have been an invaluable collaborator in putting the new ideas into practice.
”Our health policy would be based, as any modern health policy should be, on the free choice of doctor. We could even introduce a reasonable competitiveness in the supply of health services, without having this exclusive vision, in which you and your approaches go parallel, of teaching issues and health issues, perhaps with the desire to arrive one day when it becomes true the principle of a single, public and secular education and a Social Security that is all-encompassing and compulsory.
”Regarding communication issues, why repeat once more that we consider the television monopoly anachronistic, which must immediately disappear; that it is the purpose of my government to implement the principle of freedom in the matter of television, to the very limit that the technical conditions allow. We, likewise, are going to reprivatize the second channel of Televisión Española and Radiocadena Española, because we understand that the debatable public function of this information sphere is sufficiently fulfilled by the remaining chain and the media that remain in the hands of the State.
“Going to matters of terrorism, on many occasions I have said publicly that in this matter I do not want to engage in party politics and that the decisions that the existing government adopts at any given time will be mine, with which our collaboration will not only to the tacit one, but even to support especially, so as not to facilitate the flank to what is evident in the experience of 15 years: that the ETA benefits from the discussions between socialists and aliancistas as a consequence of terrorism.
”Regarding the environment, we understand that this is one of the aspirations of every modern society and that the effort to maintain natural resources and their ecosystems should not be given up in any modern and truly progressive country. The basic objective of our environmental policy is the protection of human health and the conservation, both in quality and quantity, of the resources that sustain it. We understand that the protection of natural resources must always be compatible from the beginning with the use to which it is susceptible, not with an impedimentary nature that often makes it difficult to defend the environment due to the impossibility of seeking coordination between economic use and the conservation.
”To finish, ladies and gentlemen, a few brief touches on our administration design. Everything that has been exposed so far is useless if a modern State does not function according to these criteria of cheapness, smallness, its size, but, at the same time, professionalism and efficiency, which are lacking in the current Administration and that we want to recover for the benefit of all. It is clear that the doctrine that has promoted socialism is that the State, being the only dynamic element of society, has already begun to create a monster that was systematically devouring any type of income and that made the generation of resources unfeasible.
”We propose that the current political cabinets and executive consultancies of those autonomous bodies whose powers have been subject to a substantial transfer to the autonomous communities be abolished. More specifically, and by virtue of this principle of shrinking the structure of the State, we understand that the Ministries of Education and Culture, Public Administrations and Relations with the Courts, Public Works and Transport, Labor, Health and Social Security must be consolidated.
”You are already, inexorably, the past; We are the future, as in all the countries of the modern world, and they also have no right to prevent those of us who know and can do better from requesting their trust today. Thank you so much.”
