Sumar registers a party and puts Podemos in the dilemma of joining it

Offers expire.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
31 May 2023 Wednesday 05:13
25 Reads
Sumar registers a party and puts Podemos in the dilemma of joining it

Offers expire. On March 28, Podemos rejected the signature offered by Yolanda Díaz of a joint statement to join Sumar – a formula that implicitly recognized a bilateral relationship–, and is now facing the rejection of all formations integrated into the unity platform in any non-multilateral agreement. In other words, they want Podemos' express recognition of the other organizations that have already decided to support the platform of Vice President Yolanda Díaz.

The poor results on Sunday and the immediate call for generals have put Podemos in front of the commitment of having to decide immediately on integration in the Sumar platform, together with the rest of the formations of the left, such as IU, En Comú Podemos, More Madrid, Compromís, Chunta Aragonesista... and so on until the twelfth, like one more match, just what the Lilas had been trying to avoid for months. In Sumar, the will to integrate Podemos is still in the majority – despite the harsh attacks of the lilacs on the rest of the progressive organizations during the electoral campaign that has just ended – but the conditions are much more demanding. In addition to multilateralism, another requirement is that the negotiations that take place up to the time of registration of the eventual coalition - eight days from now - and from the registration to the formation of lists, there should be no interested leaks , and the third, that the incorporation into Sumar requires the assumption of the common program and, therefore, of the campaign messages.

Meanwhile, Sumar yesterday registered an "instrumental party", called Moviment Sumar, which will serve, at the time of drawing up lists, to facilitate the incorporation of candidates from civil society who are not part of the confluent parties. In the statement, Sumar assures that he has "a lot of advanced work" to solve the administrative requirements that the confluence requires and ratifies his commitment to the unity of the space, "bringing together all the political formations that share the country project for the next decade".

Sensitivities for the schismatic processes of previous years and for the tensions arising from Podemos' boycott of the common event in Magariños surface, but above all they weigh on Sunday's results, which, without giving glittering successes, have been very dissimilar. Thus, Unides Podem has obtained its best results in Extremadura and Navarre, the two autonomous communities in which there was already a platform for the convergence of the entire political space - that is, the equivalent of Sumar -, while it has lost almost all of its representation in the rest of the territories. Where Podemos and IU have competed, IU has come out better, multiplying the number of councilors and mayors of the lilacs. For their part, Compromís, En Comú Podem and Més Madrid have confirmed their strong implementation in their territories, and this mutation of the relative weight of each organization is also weighing on speeding up the final process of convergence. All this explains the existing conditions for the integration of the lilacs in Sumar, although it also weighs, say sources in the space, the desire to "respect the crucial historical role" that the lilacs have played in the previous cycle.

Meanwhile, the tension in Podemos grows. Yesterday the vice-president of the Balearic Islands, ex-judge Juan Pedro Yllanes, an independent integrated into Podem's candidacy, called for the resignation of the party's number one and two, Ione Belarra and Lilith Verstrynge, and asserted that the state leadership had ignored the autonomous regarding the design of the campaign and its messages. Podemos, for the time being, has not convened the state citizens' council, the highest body between congresses - in which the territorial managements are represented -, after the tense meeting on April 1, in which the candidates were forbidden to attend the act of Sumar in Magariños.