Podemos continues to prepare the break with Sumar and with the PSOE since the grievance, and yesterday the outgoing minister Ione Belarra, at the time secretary general of Podemos, summoned the press in the courtyard of Congress during the intervention of the PNV spokesperson, Aitor Esteban , to reiterate their claim to the president-elect, Pedro Sánchez, of the ministerial portfolio of Equality for Irene Montero.
Belarra, who has resigned from her own ministry for months and has focused her political action on demanding the continuity of Montero in Igualdad, assured the press that the leader of Sumar ignores her and “has not called me since July.” Immediately after the elections, Podemos demanded direct dialogue with the PSOE, apart from Sumar, and even put on the table in August a list of conditions to support Pedro Sánchez in the investiture. No one from the PSOE, much less from Moncloa, has contacted Podemos since August to accept, reject or even discuss such conditions, despite which the party leadership asked those registered to vote in favor of the investiture. of Sánchez in the consultation on the case.
Both Belarra and the tutor of the current executive, Pablo Iglesias, consider that the absence of ministers with Podemos cards, and in particular, that of Irene Montero in the council of ministers, is an affront to the party, and they have expressed this in repeatedly.
This grievance operates as a moral justification to deploy the party’s new roadmap, described in the political presentation submitted to the bases last week; initiative that has allowed the leadership to bypass a state citizen assembly to elect a new executive and that prefigures the conditions for Podemos to emancipate itself from the discipline of Sumar’s plurinational parliamentary group. Podemos’s plans are to attend the elections without Sumar, for which it cultivates the friendship of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, which could serve as an alliance for the European elections. It is not clear, in any case, that Gabriel Rufián’s known weakness for Pablo Iglesias – and his partner’s animosity for Vice President Yolanda Díaz – is shared by the party executive, despite which the parliamentary spokesperson for the Republicans launched a invitation on Wednesday to Podemos ministers to “join together.”
The possible conversion of the five minutes of Podemos deputies into free verse in the government coalition worries the PSOE and generates mixed feelings in Sumar. On the one hand, and after the behavior of the Podemos deputies during the last two years in what was the Unidas Podemos group, where they decided to act on their own and outside of the confederal bodies, the political formations gathered in Sumar -in Particularly the victims of this procedure: the commons, IU and the PCE – want an urgent divorce as the lesser evil, while others are committed to trying to dissolve them within Sumar.
The leadership of Podemos, under the supervision of former Vice President Iglesias, has decided to measure forces with Sumar in the 2024 European elections, but to do so it needs to make its own voice visible in Congress, something that is prohibited within Sumar’s plurinational group and that , without ministries in charge, is an impossible undertaking. That is the incentive to abandon the discipline of the parliamentary group and seek an alliance with others – which could be the Republican Group, if Rufián convinces the leadership of his party – or to join the mixed group with its five deputies, which It would give them control of the interventions and resources, given that right now the mixed group is only three deputies: BNG, UPN and Canarian Coalition.
If the ministries of the MEPs Ernest Urtasun and Sira Rego are confirmed, the list of the Unidas Podemos eurogroup would run and two Podemos deputies would enter, which means that they would take control of the delegation’s resources. That would give room for maneuver to those of Iglesias, harassed by economic difficulties after the debacle suffered on May 28. In this battle for resources it will be decided whether Podemos respects the July agreements or looks for life on its own.
