2023-12-05 20:20:43
It was the Time.news of an announced breakup. Podemos made official this Tuesday afternoon its departure from Sumar to join the Mixed Group in the Congress of Deputies. After months of public disagreements following a pact, also very complex, to participate together in the general elections on June 23, Ione Belarra’s party takes the final step and completes its break with the coalition led by Yolanda Díaz. The organization, which made the decision public on the same day that the resignation of the regional coordinator in Madrid, Jesús Santos, was announced, amidst strong criticism of the management, warns that it will put pressure on the Government to negotiate the next General State Budgets. As EL PAÍS has learned, Podemos is failing to comply with the bilateral agreement reached with Sumar, which until now has not been made public. In point 10, regarding the functioning of the parliamentary group, it is established that “a single” group will be formed and that Podemos “commits” to remaining in it “for the entire duration of the legislature.”
The parliamentary spokesperson for the Díaz coalition, Marta Lois, has expressed her “surprise” at having learned of the news from the media — at the same time that the head of Organization, Lilith Verstrynge, called an advisor from the second vice president’s team. — and has assured that he does not share the “victimist vision” of the party, while calling for “high-level politics” at a time of “harassment” of the Executive by the right and the extreme right. “I can’t imagine that any Podemos deputy wants to oppose and put the progressive Government at risk,” said the deputy, for whom the Belarra party’s breakup is not only with the pact sealed with Sumar, but with the “more than three million citizens” who voted for them on 23-J. Although Lois did not want to describe the party’s behavior as “transfuguism”, group sources do call the action of the five deputies that way. The group’s management is already working to reverse the appointments in the commissions (formalized on Monday) where Podemos has representation in several of them.
As Diario Red has advanced, the media directed by the founder of Podemos Pablo Iglesias, and the spokesperson Javier Sánchez Serna verbalized minutes later, the formation, with five deputies, begins a new stage outside the vice president’s group. Sánchez Serna has assured that they will “continue working with total autonomy”, one of the issues, that of their own position, that they had been demanding from Sumar for some time. In addition to him, the general secretary of the party, Ione Belarra, will move to the mixed team; the coordinator in Andalusia, Martina Velarde; the former Canarian councilor Noemí Santana; and Verstrynge. From now on, they will share space with BNG, UPN and Coalificación Canaria in the Mixed Group.
“I announce to you that from now on, the Podemos deputies will join the Mixed Group to guarantee our ability to do politics in Congress and continue guaranteeing courageous transformations,” said Serna in a brief statement during the plenary session that hosts the appearance of the Foreign Minister. , José Manuel Albares, to report on the Government’s position on the conflict in the Middle East. A session in which Belarra had requested to intervene, a request that was rejected by the leadership of the group, which has elected the former ambassador to the UN Agustín Santos Maraver, and from which the five Podemos parliamentarians finally decided to be absent.
In the words of Sánchez Serna, the decision officially adopted this Tuesday is motivated by the lack of capacity to “do politics” within the parliamentary group, either in the form of plenary interventions (there have not been any since the constitution of the Cortes in August ) or the presentation of bills or motions, which cannot be presented without the approval of another deputy with an authorized signature. “The rules are not the same,” he denounced. The formation of the former Minister of Social Rights was also left out of the distribution of spokespersons for the group last September, which were granted to Catalunya en Comú, Compromís or Chunta Aragonesista. “We have tried to do everything possible, but it has proven impossible,” the deputy justified.
Agreement with Sumar
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As EL PAÍS has learned, with the departure to the Mixed Group, Podemos breaches the bilateral agreement reached with Sumar, which until now had not been made public. In point 10, regarding the functioning of the parliamentary group, it is established that “a single” group will be formed, that Podemos “commits” to remaining in it “for the entire duration of the legislature”, that “the spokesperson and the substitute will correspond to the person designated by Movimiento Sumar” and that its operation “will be governed by a regulation that will respect the agreements adopted in these protocols and will be agreed upon among the political forces that make up the coalition.” Regarding political participation, the document did not grant Podemos any specific representation, nor did it regarding the distribution of commissions (although they finally chair one of the six that Sumar directs, the Social Rights Commission, the same percentage that they represented: five deputies out of 31 ). Podemos sources point out that his departure does not have major economic repercussions either. The electoral coalition granted Sumar 23% of the distribution of subsidies and kept the most important one intact, which is the one granted by the Ministry of the Interior.
Belarra together with deputies Velarde, Sánchez Serna, Verstrynge and Santana and the former Minister of Equality, Irene Montero. Rodrigo Jiménez (EFE)
The war on the left has served the PP to attack the Executive again this Tuesday, calling the latest episode a “media circus.” “We have had more Government crises than Government days,” said the PP Deputy Secretary of Regional and Municipal Policy, Elías Bendodo.
The relationship between the two parties was already very deteriorated. After forging an alliance out of pure electoral interest last June, the day after the elections, when the right did not obtain enough support to govern, Belarra denounced the strategy of silencing Podemos. The criticism has intensified in recent weeks, to the point of stating that “Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz had “kicked them out of the Government”, an unprecedented complaint in a change of Executive. The news of the breakup, which according to Podemos sources has been brewing for some time, comes when contacts must begin for the negotiation of next year’s Accounts, in which the organization plans to put pressure on the Executive and in the midst of the umpteenth internal crisis, with the resignation of Jesús Santos, who in the morning described the clash with Sumar as “incomprehensible.” With the regional elections in Galicia and Euskadi and the European ones next year, the party also seeks to have its own profile that allows it to compete independently of those of Díaz, especially in the elections to the European Parliament, and to do so, even, with a head of the list like the former Minister of Equality Irene Montero. The breakup, in any case, threatens to have consequences on the conversations already underway in the two communities.
Conversations in Galicia
JOSÉ MANUEL ABAD
After learning of the breakup, the general secretary of Podemos Galicia, Borja San Ramón, recalled that his party has its own political direction in Galicia and that it has a route “approved by 33,000 registered members” that gives them the ability to reach agreements of autonomously for a possible coalition under the umbrella of Sumar in the next regional elections. On November 13, they sent Sumar a 10-page document in which they established a “minimum agreement” and the way “to organize the campaign” and which expressly included “the functioning of the future group” in the Galician Parliament, with references to the spokespersons and the participation quotas in the plenary sessions.
The group has not yet received a concrete response to its proposal, although in a recent meeting, San Ramón points out, Sumar representatives pointed out that there were some elements that they did not like, although they did not specify which ones. Including that meeting, Sumar, Podemos and IU have held a total of three meetings in the last two months to address the possible electoral coalition. Podemos Galicia has learned of the decision to break up through Verstrynge.
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