Vice President Yolanda DÃaz today takes the step of running for the presidency of the Government –as Pablo Iglesias proposed to her when he left politics two years ago– at the head of the Sumar platform and in all probability she will do so without the presence of the Podemos leadership, although they did of candidates and deputies of the purple formation that already announced days ago that they would not abide by a boycott dictated by the party executive. The tension between the leadership of Podemos and DÃaz has been reversed within the party, many of whose candidates for 28-M were determined supporters of being at the Sumar event today and expressed this in the State Citizen Council.
The general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, Minister of Social Rights, repeated yesterday before the State Citizen Council of Podemos what the party and its former leader have been repeating all week: that they would not join the act if Yolanda DÃaz did not sign yesterday a document committing that the elaboration of the lists would be carried out through primaries open to all citizens.
That is to say, things were exactly in the same place yesterday as they were last Tuesday, when DÃaz came to offer Podemos a joint statement in defense of the primaries. There was no agreement because the purples demand that the formula be absolutely specific and DÃaz argued that the specific methodology must be agreed upon with all the political forces that are integrated into Sumar. Belarra explained yesterday that the proof that Podemos is for unity is that for the May elections it has signed more pacts with IU, to run as Unidas Podemos, than in any previous call, and pointed to Más Madrid and CompromÃs as the culprits of there has not been a unitary list in the Valencian Community and Madrid.
He also expressed his party’s main fear of the new space: “Many people, even from within our political space, think that in the next legislature, Podemos has to play a secondary role.” Belarra says that such a position is legitimate but that, in the opinion of Podemos, “a strong Podemos is a condition of possibility to make the impossible possible.”
Belarra’s ultimatum to Yolanda DÃaz, however, was not shared by many of the territorial representatives and candidates of the next autonomous communities, who consider it a political error that not attending the Sumar act will cost 28-M. The discussion behind closed doors in the State Citizen Council of Podemos was unusually intense, to the point that the meeting, which began at 11:00 in the morning, concluded after 15:00. There was no explicit challenge to the leadership of any territory – beyond those that had already announced their presence – and no specific instruction was given not to attend, but the party leadership was ratified in the ultimatum issued by the general secretary to Yolanda DÃaz .
At the same time that the Citizen Council of Podemos started, the meeting of the Federal Coordinator of the United Left began, before which the Minister of Consumption, Alberto Garzón, presented his political report. The general coordinator of the IU made “a call for all political forces, including the comrades of Podemos and its federal leadership”, to attend the launch of Sumar’s candidacy “without prior conditions”. The minister argued that “there will always be time to negotiate the conditions so that we are all comfortable.” Because, Sumar’s act is “the beginning of a process of restructuring and reunion of political forces and citizens that should allow us to reach further and to more people.” The different position of IU lies in a different diagnosis. While Podemos maintains that its shrinkage since 2016 is the result of the harassment suffered and the succession of resignations or schisms, Garzón shares with Sumar that “the continued erosion of our space since 2016 is not only due to external causes, to the furious and ruthless attack , there are other factors that explain that there have been many political forces that have broken away from the original project of United We Can in 2016. We have lost social support, electoral support and we have lost political forces â€, he summarized.
With this conviction, he explained, Sumar does not have to operate as a political party to use but as “a meeting space for political forces, citizens, many people who believe that an instrument is needed to correct the deficiencies that we have been accumulating.” . And he assured that “the primaries are not up for discussion, there will be”, but that it is up to all the parties to be “humble” and “understand that since it is a space for the reunion of many political forces, in Adding each one of those political forces He has the right to comment on what those primaries will be like.â€
The truth is that in the face of Podemos’ insistent request for a prior commitment, several of the political organizations that will be in Magariños today and that support Yolanda DÃaz’s new space have already announced this week that they will not feel concerned by a prior agreement of DÃaz with Podemos regarding the way in which the different parties should be integrated into a single list for the generals.
The other demand that Belarra made to DÃaz is that the vice president campaign for the United Podemos lists in May, which would be a slight to those, such as Más Madrid, Proyecto Drago or CompromÃs, who do not participate in the IU and Podemos alliance. In any case, the long Citizen Council of Podemos, in which no vote was taken nor did the territorial leaders manage to convince the state leadership to relax its position of boycotting the act of Sumar, ended with a general consensus that the formation Morada, despite the sit-in, will continue working in the coming weeks and months on a unity candidacy for the general elections.
The situation, however, is delicate, because Sumar does not want to sit down to negotiate the concretion of the candidacies for generals with the dozen or so formations that he aspires to integrate until the May elections have passed, which in practice will operate as a thermometer of the exact correlation of forces between the different organizations and therefore they will condition the negotiating muscle of each one.
This was, in his own words at the Autumn University of Podemos, the scenario most feared by the former leader of the purples, Pablo Iglesias, who in the summer was still convinced that Pedro Sánchez would advance the general elections to May, which would give We may be in a better position to negotiate its integration into Sumar. In fact, the fear of that fixed photo of the establishment of each organization in the territory explains why Podemos has tried to sign some pre-nuptial capitulations with DÃaz before the polls open.
Relations are not broken between the parties of Sumar and Podemos, but the maneuvering capacity of those who until now have been the pivot between Yolanda DÃaz’s entourage and that of Pablo Iglesias and Irene Montero -the deputies Jaume Asens and Enrique Santiago and the secretary of the State of Social Rights, Nacho Ãlvarez–, have been reduced. The waves that do not knock down houses do not pass in vain. They oxidize the foundations.
