The Podemos State Citizen Council, the party’s highest decision-making body, meets this Saturday in Madrid, in an environment of internal division that pits the party’s territorial executives against the state leadership. The reason: Sumar’s act on Sunday, in which Vice President Yolanda DÃaz will predictably announce her willingness to lead a state candidacy in the next general elections, as ex-Vice President Pablo Iglesias entrusted her two years ago, when he left the government.
The struggle for the hegemony of the Sumar project launched by DÃaz and the will of Podemos to be the central party in space has accelerated in recent weeks with debates around the form of constitution of the candidacies for generals, to the point of that Podemos, the promoter of DÃaz’s political initiative, could be the only formation absent on Sunday from the Magariños sports center in Madrid, a way for the state leadership of Podemos to express its discontent with the political autonomy adopted by Yolanda DÃaz.
However, the discontent of the party leadership, expressed repeatedly and ostensibly by former Vice President Pablo Iglesias, by the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, and by the Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, at the time, general secretary of the party, does not It is shared by the territorial directorates of the formation, which put the urgent before the important: boycotting Sumar’s act on Sunday could affect the electoral expectations of the territories before the imminent appointment with the polls, on May 28.
None of the territories is in a position of strength such that its absence in Magariños could be innocuous for its electoral expectations in May. In fact, throughout this week, there has been severe internal stress in Podemos among those who are going to attend the act of confirmation of Yolanda DÃaz’s candidacy, regardless of the criteria of the state leadership, those who would like to but do not They will do so if the party leadership expressly prohibits it and those who believe that we must close ranks with the decision of the general secretary, before what they consider the umpteenth attempt to destroy the party.
Among the weakened territorial leaderships of Podemos, there are a majority of those who believe that Sumar is the locomotive to which to engage to survive the next electoral cycle, in a very unique way to the commitment of May 28, but at the same time they lack the political strength, embodied in regional and municipal implementation, to challenge the party leadership.
Podemos, installed in a challenging framework with respect to the rest of the confluent formations in the political space and the majority partner of the Government, launched this Friday an offensive against the president of the CIS, José Félix Tezanos, for the way of counting the votes of Sumar in the latest barometer, which when transferred to the voting intention of Unidas Podemos, applies a drop of more than two points which, Podemos stresses, is not real if Sumar’s votes are counted.
In the rest of the political space, this offensive against Tezanos is interpreted as the umpteenth attempt by Podemos to reinforce its political identity through conflict with its travel companions, firstly the PSOE, but also the rest of the space forces, with which the offensive against Tezanos was not consulted.
With nerves on the surface, Podemos gathers its Citizen Council in an attempt to close ranks that will hardly avoid the growing tension between the Madrid leadership and the territories, caused by the different horizon of events in which they operate. While the state leadership operates in the key of general elections to place Podemos in the best conditions to negotiate its role in Sumar, the regional executives face the May elections as an existential challenge, in which they risk continuing to exist politically in the institutions the next day.
In recent days, various regional leaderships have expressed their willingness to attend the Sumar event on Sunday and many others have confessed their preference to attend while they wait for the party’s governing bodies to issue instructions. Many understand that in the debate of the Citizen Council this Saturday the future of the political formation is at stake and its ability to negotiate with the rest of the political organizations, more than a dozen, the weight of each one of them in Sumar.
It is not expected that the Council will debate whether Podemos presents its own electoral candidacy in general in December apart from Yolanda DÃaz, but that will be the latent question in the debates, an option that deep down everyone assumes will be modulated by territorial power that Podemos manages to accredit in the May elections.
