Right man for the job

SPAIN’S Attorney General Jose Manuel Maza shilly-shallied over choosing a successor to Anti-corruption Public Prosecutor, Manuel Moix.

Moix was obliged to resign after he was linked to some dodgy decisions and found with a share in a Panama-registered company.

The post has now gone to Alejando Luzon, an anti-corruption fiscal since the department was created in 1995, and originally tipped to get the job that went to Moix last February.

Luzon was not Maza’s first choice, insiders said. For reasons best known to himself he preferred Maria Angeles Montes, a fiscal who had not headed a team since 2011 and lacked experience in finance and corruption cases.

Hard to dismiss the suspicion that Maza only chose the best person for the job because all eyes were on him this time.

Definite and indefinite articles

CATALUÑA’S pro-independence politicians continue to push the region headlong into secession with legislation that smacks of dictatorship.

A margin of one vote will be enough for victory, however low the turnout, declared regional president Carles Puigdemont.

There is discussion as to how the central government can put the brakes on the helter-skelter hurtle towards independence on October 2 should the ‘yes’ vote win the October 1 referendum.

The Constitution has mechanisms to counteract Puigdemont: Article 155 empowers the central government to suspend an autonomy. Or there’s Article 116 that covers sedition but would involve force.

Rajoy is said to prefer the Public Safety Law. A solution that has never been seriously contemplated is a national referendum, something the secessionists would never agree to. They know they would be on a hiding to nowhere.

Simple algebra

IGNACIO ERREJON is the closest Podemos has to a voice of reason and doubtless that’s why he is no longer its Number Two or spokesman.

Not long ago he advised party supremo Pablo Iglesias to overcome his obsession with the PSOE socialists.

Someone could try saying the same thing to the PSOE secretary general Pedro Sanchez who is equally obsessed with Podemos.

Both want to oust the Partido Popular from the government and the institutions but this is unlikely because Podemos and PSOE want to be the only party representing the Left.

Until they heed Errejon’s advice they will continue to cancel each other out like two elements in algebra and Mariano Rajoy will sit as pretty as anyone can while presiding a minority government.

Eye of the beholder

IMAGE should have no bearing on what a female politician does or says.

So it should make no difference that Neus Munte, the Catalan regional government’s spokeswoman, crowns the face of a weary bureaucrat with the long blonde hair of an adolescent.

Nor should her extraordinarily amorphous knees colour our view of her and her ambitions for Catalan succession, although she really should avoid short skirts.

Totally unfair, of course: no-one judges Mariano Rajoy, Pedro Sanchez, Albert Rivera and Pablo Iglesias on their looks.

Nevertheless it must be admitted that PSOE secretary general Pedro Sanchez, so drop-dead pleasing to the eye, does not live up to his visual promise.

That’s another aspect of stereotyping, because a tall, dark and handsome male politician is expected to be a winner too.

It doesn’t help that Adolfo Suarez, the Transition’s first democratically-elected president, fitted the bill in all respects.

Or that so far our Pedro is a winner of primaries but nothing else