• Sumar Errejón confirms that he will accompany Díaz this Sunday while Iglesias attacks her for "being closer" to Más País
  • Politics The thousand pieces of 'indignant' and 'tides' that Yolanda Díaz tries to add

The confrontation between Podemos and Yolanda Díaz has become entrenched and threatens to cloud the vice president's big week. The one that will culminate this Sunday with the announcement of his candidacy for the general elections in a staging in Madrid to which the main figures of the space of the alternative left to the PSOE will attend, with the exception, right now, of Ione Belarra, Irene Montero and the rest of the national leadership of the purple.

The excuse used by Podemos is that Díaz does not want to commit in writing to hold primaries to configure the electoral lists. It is the formula with which he considers that he would obtain the "weight" that he really deserves in the main starting positions. That is why it airs that the lack of these guarantees prevents its leaders from attending Sunday's event. However, the issue is much more complex. Because what is happening is that the purples are trying to impose very specific conditions on Sumar without negotiating them at any time with the rest of the political forces that are called to enter the electoral candidacy, and that are close to a fortnight.

Thus, Podemos is ignoring Díaz's partners and potential partners with the aim of starting Sumar a "bilateral" agreement that then has to be assumed by everyone else. But in which none of the parties has taken the floor to give an opinion or be heard. The times here are important, because Podemos wants to do it before the May elections. Lest after the elections the fifteen parties can argue that they have more votes than the purple ones in their territories and, therefore, ask for more weight to negotiate.

Sumar sources affirm that their commitment to the primaries is "clear", but warn that the organization of something as relevant as such a process has to be the result of a "multilateral" pact, that is, in which all the political forces that wish to get involved in the candidacy participate. In addition, it is the same for a space that has a "plurinational" vocation.

Agreement to two

However, what Podemos is proposing is that the agreement be two, between the purple party and Sumar. This is what these sources point out happened last week. Díaz's team sent them a text that put in writing that there would be primaries, without specifying how, but the counterproposal that came from the purple side was to articulate the issue as a "bilateral" issue between Podemos and Sumar.

This is also stated in public by Belarra's party, which says that "what corresponds is that we reach an agreement" with Yolanda Díaz, because, for its part, she "will reach agreements with other formations." This way of understanding the negotiation led to the shipwreck of that last attempt to reach a minimum pact and served yesterday Pablo Iglesias to return to the charge with the pressures and to install the story among his own that if there is no agreement it is because the vice president does not want primaries.

Confronted with this opinion is Alberto Garzón. The IU leader accused the purples of "working against the agreement" and of using the "noise" to "wear down" Díaz, abducted by "the logic of confrontation and the constant search for loyalists and traitors." In addition, he highlighted his proposal for a "table of parties" in which "multilateral" negotiations can be made. "Anything that is wearing down or eroding Sumar or negotiating in public with that objective is going the opposite way. Perhaps there are those who think that this brings him closer to the agreement but honestly, it distances him absolutely, "he said in RNE.

Iglesias criticized yesterday from his television the idea of holding meetings of "all parties in a room" when there are forces that have very few deputies or even none. And he raised the misgivings about his type of primary in the "fear" of some to be left without an "armchair".

In Sumar they claim to have no problem agreeing a document with Podemos but stress that the candidacy does not have only two legs, but that there are many and that it implies negotiating "with everyone". In this sense, everyone here has their interests regarding what those primaries should be. Podemos wants them to be "open" to take advantage of their greater number of militants to impose themselves on others and ensure a preponderant role in the lists. Other forces refuse to enter a dog-faced competition. Others want voting to be provincial (by constituency) rather than by community or at the national level.

We must remember that there is no precedent for joint primaries between Podemos and IU for the 2016 general elections or the double appointment of 2019. Nor in the regional and municipal elections from 2016 until today. In all these cases the primaries were made by parties and the positions were distributed in pacts between organizations, reserving the seats.

For the rest, Íñigo Errejón announced yesterday that he will be at the event on Sunday and expands the list of first swords: Ada Colau, Garzón, Mónica García, Joan Subirats... Almost in parallel, Iglesias accused Díaz of being politically "closer" to Errejón than to Podemos.

According to The Trust Project criteria

Learn more

  • Can
  • Add
  • Yolanda Diaz
  • IU
  • Ada Colau
  • Alberto Garzón
  • Pablo Iglesias
  • Irene Montero
  • PSOE
  • Articles Álvaro Carvajal