Vice-president Yolanda Díaz presented yesterday in Madrid the agreement of the confluence of the left parties under the umbrella of Sumar. "You asked us for an agreement and we got it". This will be the distinctive character of Sumar, "dialogue and agreement", he explained in an event at the Fundación Diario Madrid. The leader of Sumar thanked the negotiating teams of the sixteen political organizations that achieved the confluence: "Not only have they lived up to the circumstances, but they have given the best of themselves to understand that the people he wanted us to shake hands."
"We have reached a great agreement for hope", emphasized Díaz, and announced that his campaign will not focus on the fear of the far right. "Sumar has not come to stir up fear, panic, or to tell horror stories, but to point out the emperor's dress and remind him that he is naked." The imperial allusion was expressly directed at Alberto Núñez Feijóo, whom he accused of not knowing the economic situation of the country and of disbelieving bodies such as the European Commission, the OECD or the International Monetary Fund. "They lie and make noise because they have nothing to offer", said Díaz, and made it clear that Sumar's political character will be the new Laborism and that his political adversary will not be the ultra-right or the PSOE but the leader of the PP.
He stated that Sumar aims to "listen to those who are afraid, doubt or do not trust because they have reasons that we must listen to and solutions that we must offer". The goal, he insisted, is to win the elections on July 23: "We will win the general elections and build a new country agreement."
Díaz assures that Sumar and his country project are born from the conviction that "our country can be better and will be better, that life can be easier". This assumes, he explained, that Sumar will not operate from indignation, but "taking care of the people", with "different forms, with care, with affection and with respect" because the general elections "are not about the last four years, but over the next eight".
From Podemos, on the other hand, the organizing secretary, Lilith Verstrynge, who will be number four on Sumar's lists for Barcelona, spoke to the press yesterday and demanded from Sumar a review of the previous day's agreement . "There are nine days left to rectify and we hope they will reconsider." The rubric of Podemos in the agreement with Sumar seems to bear the caution of the liquidation firms that end up in the Labor Magistrate: "Signatory, not compliant". Lilith Verstrynge insisted that the exclusion of Irene Montero from the lists of the confluence is "a textbook political error" and assured that she does not foresee Sumar not giving in. We can, explained Verstrynge, understand that Montero embodies the persecution and flogging – political, media and even judicial – that the Lila formation has suffered and that his absence is not only to consolidate a punishment to the party but to the entire feminist movement . "It sends a very dangerous message of disciplining the feminist movement, women and society as a whole that wants to get involved in politics," he said in a scathing statement. The number two of Podemos explained that the decision of its formation to present itself with Sumar is not so much a voluntary act as forced by the agony circumstances: "We will present ourselves in the elections of 23-J with Sumar because anything else would be make it easy on the right and the ultra-right".
The letter that the general secretary, Ione Belarra, has addressed to the Podemos militancy, in which she repeats her argument from Friday, is expressed in an identical sense: "We have been threatened that, if we do not accept these conditions, we would be excluded from the coalition, as already happened in Andalusia", where the lilacs prolonged the negotiation until the last minute and ended up arriving late at the firm. The ex-leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, in an open letter to the digital CTXT, goes further and says that he "is aware that people around him (...) are trying to warn him that he is compromising his political goals by assume herself as the final executor of a violent campaign orchestrated from the most sinister apparatuses of the media, judicial and political right".
During the last few hours, this statement about the exclusion of Montero is being controversial because, although the negotiating teams of Sumar deny it, other sources close to Podemos say that there was no such veto and that it was Irene herself Montero who refused to join Sumar's lists as number one for Bizkaia.
