2023-04-26 07:43:06
The Unidas Podemos brand will not be present on 28-M in the Community of Madrid. The three parties that make up the coalition in the region —Podemos, IU and Alianza Verde— have decided to bury the electoral formula for the regional elections, and they will present themselves with a ballot that will bear the initials of all of them. Thus, they dispense with the nomenclature used in the general elections, and in the last regional ones, in an emblematic square for the party founded by Pablo Iglesias, who was born in the capital more than nine years ago.
The decision does not extend to the 10 communities in which Podemos and IU concur together on 28-M: in five of them a combined name will be used (Unidas por Extremadura, or Unidas sí Podemos in the Canary Islands, for example); in the rest, the agreement goes through concurring with the acronyms of the parties that make up the confluence. Ballasted by the general decline in the polls and in a context of reconfiguration of the space to the left of the PSOE, the UP brand is therefore entering a different phase. And the irruption of Sumar, the platform with which the Vice President of the Government Yolanda Díaz aspires to attend the end of the year general elections, can put a definitive expiration date on its use, because Izquierda Unida will be integrated into that project.
Last September it emerged that shortly after the Andalusian elections in June —in which the PP obtained an absolute majority and the left suffered a strong setback at the polls— the leaderships of Podemos and IU held a meeting in which they discussed the possibility of dispense with this nomenclature in the future. Among the arguments for renaming the alliance, according to sources familiar with the conversations, was the wear of the brand. Unidas Podemos was no longer the formula used in the Andalusian elections, where the negotiations for a joint candidacy —also with Más País—, which finally gave the IU the head of the list, had been so rushed that Podemos ended up outside the official registry of the coalition, which generated bureaucratic problems and a loss of trust between organizations, which still persist today. In that meeting, the two formations welcomed the evolution towards a sum of acronyms of each organization, which also gave space for other parties to integrate into the pact in a simpler way. In most agreements, the order of the names, both in regional and municipal ones, coincides with the political force that leads the ballot.
In 2019, Podemos and Izquierda Unida had reached a framework agreement —which was more of a recommendation than a requirement— in which a common name was established that was “United” and that could be combined with other elements in each territory. As IU sources now explain, the criteria for deciding the final formula has had to do with the roots or success of the brand used so far. In the case of Extremadura, for example, it has been maintained. Also in the Valencian Community (Unides Podem-Esquerra Unida) or in the municipalities of the Basque Country (in this case in Basque). In addition, the Canary Islands (where the agreement between formations is new), the Balearic Islands and Castilla-La Mancha (formerly a sum of acronyms) are incorporated into this model.
Sources from Podemos in the Community of Madrid justify the change in adherence to the Alianza Verde coalition, the party led by the Basque deputy Juan López de Uralde. “We think it better reflects the diversity of the candidacy. This is how the three political formations have decided ”, they defend. The head of the formation list is in this community for Alejandra Jacinto, deputy in the Assembly and national co-spokesperson for Podemos.
Despite the friction unleashed within Unidas Podemos due to the role of each organization in the new space that Yolanda Díaz is building for the generals and about which Ione Belarra’s formation remains skeptical, Podemos and Izquierda Unida have achieved sealed alliances in 10 of the 12 communities at stake this 28-M (all except Asturias and Aragón), a record number. In four of them —Navarra, the Canary Islands, Murcia and Cantabria— the pact takes place for the first time. All in a context of rising rights, according to the polls, which complicates, firstthe options to revalidate the six coalition governments in which Podemos participates.
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