Yesterday, Podemos called a consultation in extremis to its bases to ratify the integration agreement in Sumar, although without including such an agreement in the consultation. The measure is the reaction of the state leadership to the movement of the autonomous leaderships on Wednesday, demanding that their leadership sign the integration in Sumar, after the disastrous performance of the party in the elections of May 28.
The peculiar wording of the question to the bases, "do you accept that the coordination council of Podemos, following the unity criteria set by the state citizen council, negotiate with Sumar and, where appropriate, agree on an electoral alliance between Podemos and Sumar ?, requires for the party executive a democratic endorsement from the militants, at the last minute, after a negotiation directed exclusively by that executive –council and coordination– without prior consultation with the bases or the citizen council. The moment of the call, after ten days of negotiation, suggests that the talks have already been exhausted and that Podemos wants the endorsement of its militancy to "yes" to Sumar's offer.
While the rest of the participants in the negotiation have remained silent about its terms, those responsible for Podemos have been leaking to the media all week that the final stumbling block has nothing to do with the weight of the purple ones on the lists of the new platform, the method of elaboration of these or the money assigned to the purple ones, but with its aspiration to place the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, in a position that leaves the lists of generals, an extreme that Sumar would not accept, after the Supreme Court issued a last arrow in its law of only yes is yes, ratifying the sentence reductions that the different courts have been applying. Whether this is the case or not, the fact is that on Wednesday night both parties exhausted the course of their negotiation.
The attacks by personalities from Podemos such as Pablo Iglesias and Juan Carlos Monedero to their eventual partners in Sumar –mainly Compromís, after learning that expert reports confirm that the former Valencian vice president, Mónica Oltra, did not intercede in the case against her ex-husband – and the attempt by Podemos to intimidate its eventual partners with a simulated negotiation with Esquerra – categorically denied by the Republicans – have not helped to undo the wrong and improve the position of the purples in the negotiation.
Yesterday it transpired that Podemos had registered a new party with the Ministry of the Interior, "Together, yes, we can", a registration that, according to the party's leadership, is due to an "error" that they would proceed to correct immediately. However, this initiative was read by the rest of the parties united in Sumar as the umpteenth attempt by the purples to procure an alternative plan to integration into the platform of Vice President Yolanda Díaz, of which almost all the rest of the political space parties. The search was carried out during the morning – a few hours after the negotiations ran aground – from the central headquarters of Podemos, located on Francisco Villaespesa street in Madrid, at the request of Carlos Gil Cuevas, a member of his state citizen council of the purple ones. Podemos reacted immediately, ignoring the initiative and asking the Ministry of the Interior to cancel the registration request, which yesterday afternoon, however, was still active. However, this movement unleashed all the suspicions in the rest of the eventual allies, since an alternative brand registered before June 9 would allow Podemos to run on its own regardless of the signing of the agreement to join Sumar.
The most prominent leaders of Podemos dedicated the rest of the day to communicating on social networks that they had voted in favor of the question launched by the party leadership, to encourage their bases to do the same in a consultation that concludes today at 10 hours and in which all those registered who have verified their identity before Wednesday can participate.
The final plebiscite maneuver of the team led by Secretary General Ione Belarra and her organization secretary, Lilith Verstryng, –who have led the negotiations with Sumar for the last nine days– rests on an ironic biblical archetype: the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, before the impossibility of saving the life of the Nazarene against the criteria of the Jewish Sanhedrin, and at the same time disagreeing with that execution, summoned the Palestinian "bases" to decide, in a plebiscite, whether Rome should kill Jesus or the repeat offender Barabbas. Given the result, Pilate washed his hands in public, ignoring the crucifixion of the carpenter's son. We can announce today if they will be Sumar or Juntas sí se puede.
