Yesterday’s meeting of the state citizen council of Podemos, almost three months after the previous one, did not provide reflection or conclusions on the results of 28-M – elections in which Podemos lost almost half of its voters – but served for the party to announced his assumption of Sumar’s hegemony in the political space and the decision of the purples to move away from the front line of the electoral campaign, whose helm will remain in the hands of the Sumar leadership team.
The general secretary, Ione Belarra, explained it in her initial speech before the highest body of the purple between congresses, assuming, yes, the results of May as a defeat: “To win you have to know how to lose”, was the brief analysis on the situation, after recalling the harassment to which the party has been subjected, as the main reason to explain the loss of electoral support. Belarra insisted, yes, on repeating that Irene Montero had been personally vetoed by Yolanda Díaz – a statement that no participant in the talks between Podemos and Sumar ratifies – and on closing ranks around the Minister of Equality, who has become a symbol of identity resilient of Podemos. “Irene is a benchmark for this party and a benchmark for feminism, and Yolanda Díaz’s veto of Irene is, above all, a mistake, because it implies accepting the discipline of the right and means telling women that they put their bodies and that they are fighting for feminist advances that in the end the attacks achieve their objective”, assured the leader of Podemos. And in this sense, Belarra tied the future of the party to that of the minister: “This party will never let go of Irene Montero’s hand, which is an essential part of the future of Podemos.”
Exceptionally, Irene Montero herself intervened openly for the citizen council and the press, reiterating the story of the vice president’s personal “veto” against her and emphasizing that she is not the victim of the veto, but rather that she embodies the feminism, which is the true victim of her absence from the electoral lists that will run on July 23. And in that speech of identification between herself and the movement for equality as victims of the “veto”, she assured that nevertheless the feminist movement is “unstoppable”. In these terms, and despite Belarra’s announcement that Podemos will assume a subordinate role in the electoral campaign, Montero assured that “we are not going to remain silent or stand still in the face of the reactionary offensive that is being deployed from the deepest powers and that they represent in the institutional policy PP and Vox. We are going to talk and we are going to fight because it is what we know how to do best”, proclaimed the Minister of Equality.
The representatives of the territories that make up the state citizen council, in the debate after the interventions of numbers one and two of the party, according to sources from the purple formation, seconded the general secretary in her decision to join the Sumar coalition and to do it, as Belarra explained, with a secondary position and assuming the “veto” to Irene Montero without breaking the coalition pact with the other fourteen political forces that are integrated into the Sumar platform.
