IN SUPPORT OF ES BALUARD

Dear Sir, AS a summer resident of Majorca for the past 35 years, I must question the unrelenting daily attacks by Diario de Mallorca and El Mundo upon Es Baluard and Pedro Serra - whom they demeaningly refer to as “the editor” rather than the President of Grup Serra and the recognised and respected art collector that he is. One wonders what this real battle is about. One also wonders why the papers focus on such repetitive accusations. Can it be there is such a lack of interessting news important enough to fill these pages? Where is the appreciation for the forsight, the vision, the planning and the generosity of Pedro Serra and his family whether the donation is for life or for 30 years? In either case, it is surely a great sacrifice both for him and his family and a magnificent gift to Majorca. Just as the Guggenheim in Bilbao has attracted so much international attention, Es Baluard and its promise represents a future higher level of tourismm here. As a New Yorker and a member of MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), I find Es Baluard to be more architecturally interesting and better designed than MOMA. Es Baluard needs all our encouragement and support - not this continual battering condemnation. Again we have to wonder what this is really all about. POSTAL voting is incompatible with the secret ballot. Ray Fleming highlighted one of the least noticed threats to the operation of Western democracies in his Tuesday article on the subject. In the name of efficiency and wider participation, the integrity of elections is being undermined. The experience in the United States should be a warning alarm. The state of Washington now has a Democratic governor that the overwhelming majority of its citizens believe to have lost the election. The mindless industrial scale of the King County (Seattle) election department had it accepting votes from felons (illegal) and toting several thousand more votes than registered voters. Washington state has an all postal system. During the recounts on at least seven occasions new batches of votes were ”discovered.” In Philadelphia, black pastors have their parishioners bring their blank ballots to church and the “community,” votes together. The Democratic share of those ballots has leaped from c. 85 percent to 100 percent. In Massachusetts social workers have been caught registering mental defectives and then “assisting” them to fill out the postal ballot that they cannot understand. It is hard to fathom why, Kennedy and Kerry do not need the extra votes here. In the United Kingdom the fraud has been mostly in immigrant communities. It will only grow as the sharpies discover just how easy it is. Homeless alcoholics, bring the man your blank ballot and leave a voting citizen ten pounds richer. Postal balloting means coercion and bribery. The most vulnerable sector of society is that most dependent upon the government. Do you want elections decided by those amongst us who only consume resources? A country that allows and encourages incumbents to rig elections is not a democracy in any sense. In most circumstances it is not necessary to corrupt more than 10% of the ballots to assure victory. Democrats in the United States and Labour in the United Kingdom push this idea because they instinctively know it is to their betterment. That they will abuse it has been shown in both nations. While both sides can abuse it, the differences in vulnerability of the classes that the parties represent will tend the corruption heavily towards the socialists whatever they are called. The postal ballot, however convenient, is the enemy of the middle class and honest, fair elections.