The former president of the parliamentary group of Unidas Podemos and candidate of the commons for the general elections, Jaume Asens, has announced in an interview on RTVE that he has recently left Podemos, a party that he helped found along with leaders such as Pablo Iglesias, Íñigo Errejón, Juan Carlos Monedero, Carolina Bescansa...
Asens, who resigned from militancy in the middle of the month, is the latest of the many casualties that have occurred since the purple party decreed its break with Sumar, the political project of the second vice president of the Government Yolanda Díaz. The last one was from the party's organizational secretary, Lilith Vestrynge, last week.
The reasons for the resignation of Asens, who was a member of the executive and the state council of the formation, have to do precisely with this fracture and the political drift of Ione Belarra's party. As he explained this Monday, he experiences that decision "as a kind of mourning", as "a painful breakup because it means" letting go of a part of my life, of something that has shaped me.
But the reasons are clearly political: "I do not recognize the Podemos that currently exists," he denounced. In his opinion, "the Podemos of 2015 is now better represented in today's Sumar than in today's Podemos." In fact, now "I see a Podemos much more closed, less open, more porous, less transversal, more sectarian...", he lamented.
Asens sent a letter to the management of the purple team outlining his decision but preferred not to make it public, something for which, as he explained, the party thanked him. And the string of leader casualties that have been occurring since this summer does not seem to have an end. The one from Vestrynge joined the march of the Podemos economic guru and candidate for minister for Sumar, Nacho Álvarez, the former head of municipal policies, Jesús Santos, and the housing one, Alejandra Jacinto. Also a few days ago, the rupture between the shadow leader of the Party, Pablo Iglesias, and the co-founder Monedero, who left the program he presented on Canal Red due to ideological disagreements with the former, became evident.
Even in the autonomous communities there have been resignations such as that of the coordinator of Catalunya en Comú, Jéssica Albiach. The foreseeable candidate of the commons for the presidency of the Generalitat broke the Podemos card after the purple formation decreed the prohibition of double militancy.
Sources from Podemos frame the resignation of Asens, who left the political front line after the commons elected Aina Vidal as a candidate for the last general elections, as "a new approach to the confederal group of Sumar" after being left without a deputy record. In fact, the former leader also militates in the commons, a space that he also helped to illuminate.
Despite the election of Vidal, the commons have counted on him for the negotiation process with the pro-independence parties regarding the Amnesty law. Well connected with the leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, Asens accompanied Yolanda Díaz on her visit to Brussels to meet with the former president just when the possibility of negotiating the norm that could be approved precisely this Tuesday in the Congress of Deputies began to be considered. Not in vain, Asens stands out among the commons for his sovereign profile and, in fact, advised Puigdemont in his march to the European capital and in his international legal fight.
