Repeat 'management' until it looks like management

Palma"Stop making a fool of yourself and deceiving. You, ideology and zero management": this is the accusation that the Minister of the Presidency, Antònia Maria Estarellas, launched at the PSIB deputy Omar Lamin during Tuesday's Parliament session. What kind of accusation is it to tell a politician they have ideology, when it is precisely the ideology of public representatives that determines a good part of citizens' lives? At this point, it is worth remembering what Slavoj Žižek says, who considers that the most dangerous ideology is precisely the one we pretend not to have. It is not an theoretical extravagance. Jürgen Habermas also warned that technical rationality —what we would call 'management' today— can impose values while presenting itself as neutral. And Thomas Piketty has been reminding us for years that behind many technical decisions lie very specific ideological choices about inequality. From this, an uncomfortable conclusion emerges: 'management' is often not the alternative to ideology, but its best disguise.

The Government strives to emphasize that it is doing 'management' without ideology now that it faces the last year of the legislature, but repeating it is not enough to forget that the major problems of the Balearic Islands are far from finding a solution. The word 'emergency' is insufficient when talking about housing, mass tourism is spreading its stain at times of the year when citizens recovered the right to feel at home, and the abyss between good macroeconomic figures and the hardships of many families is becoming deeper and deeper. Is it this management that the Executive wants to boast about?

It wasn't just Estarellas –according to the minister, lowering the Cooperation budget again to six million euros is not cutting, but 'managing'. 'Management' is the favorite argument of the popular party, who also love to say that they keep their word and that they govern for the people here (the people there will fend for themselves). The president, Marga Prohens, assured that the Executive assumes the "management challenge" posed by the increase in population for the healthcare system. "There are no cuts in the budgets, but responsible management," insisted the deputy Jordi López. "The Government manages and strengthens the [healthcare] system," assured the Minister of Health, Manuela García, one of the most questioned figures of the Executive. "Faced with proclamations, we present management. Faced with agitation, we present linguistic peace," said the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sports, Jaume Bauzá, who attributes the drop in complaints for linguistic discrimination to a kind of statistical miracle and not to the fact that there is no longer an office to file them. Bauzà added that "there is no linguistic regression, but a Government that works and manages with rigor and efficiency." Like his colleague Estarellas, he criticized the representatives of the left because "management exposes them." To conclude, he made an exhibition of his democratic spirit by accusing the opposition of "daring to question this minister." A boldness.

Part of the left has bought into this narrative and is dedicated to accusing the Government of lack of management: just the piece missing to complete an exciting table tennis match. The socialist spokesperson, Iago Negueruela, accused Prohens of "not knowing how to manage" and limiting himself to "sending tweets about his lack of management". "He doesn't respond, he doesn't want to manage," he insisted, as if he hadn't reproached Prohens for exactly the same thing a few seconds earlier. His party colleague Irantzu Fernández added a more dramatic point: "The Government's management is taking our healthcare to a point of no return". Doesn't positioning oneself within this framework strip the Government's actions of their ideological component?

We are setting up a private university to boost the public one

In the creative arguments section of the week, it is worth highlighting the defense that Ana Isabel Curtó (PP) made for the creation of a new private university in the Balearic Islands (the University of Mallorca): "The defense of public university is essential for the PP. Because we believe in public university, we believe the system must grow". They believe so much in public that they want to strengthen it with a private one. Curtó assured that the private one offers "more options, paths, and specializations". However, the deputy forgot to mention the price of credits at a private center and did not present any calculations about the income of families who can afford to enroll their children there (perhaps also to strengthen public education). "The problem is not that there is more supply, it is that there is not enough," she proclaimed, without clarifying whether she was referring to public or private supply.

The honorable mention in this case is for the PSIB which, far from making an ideological exhibition with a clear 'no', chose to 'manage' the vote and abstained. The deputy Mercedes Garrido tried to square the circle: she said that the socialists are not too happy with the creation of a private university and justified the abstention by explaining that the University of Mallorca is a different case from that of CEU San Pablo. But the big common point is hardly debatable: they are private and studying there is not free.