2023-09-16 13:52:32
Podemos begins an internal process to define its strategy and the direction of the party. The general secretary, Ione Belarra, announced at an event this Saturday that they will open a period of “reflection” and “collective debate” with the bases to study what the organic and strategic steps that training should follow after a change of political cycle on the left in which they have lost the hegemony of the space to the project led by Yolanda Díaz.
“I want to ask those registered to join the militancy, all the people who think that Podemos is the essential tool. I want to tell you that we strengthen Podemos. We need your intelligence, hands and heart, your militant commitment, to rebuild militancy,” said the leader of Podemos at an event in the Fine Arts circle, before about 1,000 people according to the organization (half of them followed the event on screens). in adjoining rooms) with which the party wanted to send a message of political rearmament.
Initially, the forecast was that the event could be held in Nelson Mandela Square in Lavapiés, as a way to appeal to the place where the party was born, nine years ago, but they finally had to move the place due to rain forecasts in the capital.
The grassroots consultation process will last a month and a half, until next November 4, and will be articulated around a political document drawn up by the party leadership. “On November 4, Podemos will vote on a political document that we will make public today. With the aim of strengthening the organization politically and collectively,” said Belarra. “If you are willing to fight, so are we,” she maintained.
The proposal will serve to begin defining the roadmap that the party outlined in its Fourth Citizen Assembly and that for Belarra has become outdated. In that body, the lines were drawn for the political cycle that began then and in which the party understood, as its founder had indicated months before, that the leadership of the political space should remain in the hands of Yolanda Díaz.
This is how it appears in the political documents of the fourth Citizen Assembly: “Pablo Iglesias has been able to understand that it was time to make way for new leadership. Our activity during 2020 has built the leadership of Yolanda Díaz in the Government and in Unidas Podemos and we must take care of it, consolidate it and promote it with all our strength.”
Podemos understood that we had to leave behind a stage “starred by the leadership and personality of Pablo” and build a new party “with more collective protagonism”, with a leadership “mostly assumed by female colleagues” and that looked beyond Madrid. That assembly elected Ione Belarra as general secretary and laid the foundations for what was expected to be a kind of bicephaly: the successor of Pablo Iglesias at the head of the formation and Yolanda Díaz to lead the Unidas Podemos coalition.
“Two and a half years ago we held our fourth assembly and you elected me as general secretary. This has been and continues to be one of the greatest honors,” Belarra recalled. “I think it is fair to recognize that the objectives with which we presented ourselves to that assembly, to propose Yolanda Díaz to compete with being the majority force in the government, because our objective has always been to win and deepen transformations… Those objectives have not been met “said the party leader.
Belarra has criticized in her speech the way in which the unity process of the left has been developed for the last electoral process and has even criticized that what has happened so far can be called that way. “In these years, and I say this with immense pain, Podemos has been subjected to a process that cannot be called unity,” said the leader who has warned, looking to the future, that “agreements under these conditions cannot become to repeat.”
It is precisely the way in which Yolanda Díaz has built the leadership of the space, since Pablo Iglesias gave her the baton and Podemos formally assumed it in its political documents, which has caused the party to separate from the second vice president. The decisions that she was making, with her approach to other political forces such as Más Madrid; with the negotiation of the unity coalition in the Andalusian elections and recently with the management of some crises within the Government, they have been distancing the two parties.
That is why Podemos believes that the party must reflect on what its role should be now, as part of the coalition and the parliamentary group of Sumar but with the expectation of reaffirming its own space and trying to once again be the main party on the left. And it is that reflection that the leadership is now going to transfer to the grassroots in a debate process with registered members, organic and institutional positions that will culminate in a vote and a subsequent political conference that will serve as the start of this entire process.
The document, which comes from the management and will be passed this Saturday by the State Citizen Council, which meets this afternoon in Madrid, will be made available to the circles first so that they can debate and amend it. Later there will be time to share this text with meetings with militants from all over the country and later with regional meetings.
Proposals for Government negotiation
In this differentiation that Podemos wants to exhibit against Sumar, this Saturday it has raised a series of proposals for negotiations with the Socialist Party in order to form a new progressive coalition government. Specifically, he has raised five points in line with the demands that the party has been presenting for several months.
Specifically, they have demanded a Government agreement that includes a permanent reduction in public transport and a limit on the profit margins of food companies; a commitment to renew the Judicial Branch; a moratorium on all rental contracts during the next legislature and an increase in the minimum wage to 1,500 euros.
As a fundamental part of these proposals that have already been transferred to both Sumar and the PSOE, Podemos has demanded the presence of Irene Montero as Minister of Equality in the next coalition Government. “We can think that feminism is the most transformative social movement. It proposes to us to reorganize our way of life so that it is compatible, free, safe lives, for everyone,” defended Belarra, who has claimed that to carry these proposals forward requires “courage” and “the ability to stand up.” “That is why we think it is essential that Irene continue to lead the Ministry of Equality. I formally propose it,” she said.
Irene Montero herself participated in this Saturday’s event to defend the work she has done in her ministry and to demand that the feminist movement “continues to be the driving force of transformations.” And within that reflection she has also sent veiled messages to both the PSOE and the Yolanda Díaz project. “Feminism in institutional and government action cannot be a footnote; It is not an accessory that you put on during the campaign and take off to form a government. It must be the engine of transformations,” she defended.
“That is why it is so important that we tell them with great serenity but firmness that we are still here. We know how difficult it will be and we are willing to pay the cost. It is worth fighting without any doubt. If we don’t give up, we can win and that’s what we’re doing, winning,” she said.
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