(LI MON)
-4--
9. All this will be debated again in the autumn, with further political heat generated from the imminence of local elections due at the end of the year. The division of opinion in Andorra over Sr. Ribas' performance, as shown in the voting on the vote of confidence, nevertheless presents difficulty also for the Co-Princes, who will find it hard to endorse Ribas' new financial proposals as a clear expression of generally agreed Andorran will to reform the fiscal system, when, at the same time, they present constitutional difficulties for the Co-Princes themselves, where, for example, the regulation of the banking system and certain deposits therein has been regarded as being within the sovereigns' competence not local politicians, who may interfere in it for party political purposes.
10. These are parish pump politics blown up for a big screen. The political divisions are those of different clans, rather than parties with idealogies. The more conservative there do not much like the new ministerial system's diminition of the authority of the respected traditional spokesmen for the General Council, the Sindic and Vice-Sindic, now relegated to little more than chairmen in a debating society, with certain functions appropriate to a minister of justice, instead of proposing and preparing necessary new laws in harmony with the Co-Princes as they have done for centuries. But Ribas has a powerful weapon in his ability to create place men by appointing his supporters to administrative posts. For this purpose, he still has in hand, if finances permit, the two ministerial posts themselves unfilled out of the six envisaged in the reform decree of 1981. He also has on his side the resurgence of Andorran nationalism in a younger generation dissatisfied with the slowness of their sovereigns essentially, their French Co-Prince to delegate their powers to representative democratic institutions, the urge of an independent state for decolonisation. As a French hand-out describes Andorra: organisation politique unique en son genre".
Yours ever Virus
Gn't
E V Vines
cc: J Cooper Esq, EEB, Department of Trade
Chanceries: Madrid
Paris
E
<
"'une
J ค
C
2
L
اذ
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.