• Politics Alfonso Guerra points to Pedro Sánchez as the "problem" of the PSOE: "All decisions are made in a personal key"
  • Sánchez Government takes shelter in the international agenda and avoids questions from the press after 28-M
  • Press Sánchez's electoral advance, in the WSJ: voters, worried "by the extremism of the ruling left"
  • Radical discourse The three crossroads in which Sánchez dressed as Iglesias to survive

Former senior officials of the PSOE during the governments of Felipe González and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero have asked Pedro Sánchez for a turn towards "centrality", which is the space where the policy of the "great agreements" with parties such as the PP could be recovered. They have done so under the umbrella of the Fernando de los Ríos collective, from which they warn of the risk that the country goes "down the drain" due to "populist and extremist behaviors", in implicit allusion to Unidas Podemos and the parliamentary partners of the coalition at the head of La Moncloa.

Nicolás Redondo, the spokesman of this organization created to claim the recovery of the essences of social democracy, has defined this Thursday the current state of the party as "resigned" and in which its general secretary is "willing to any bizarre arithmetic to govern". "The will to win has been lost," lamented the former Basque leader about the strategy that Ferraz had maintained until now to raise the general elections as an electoral ticket with the Sumar of Yolanda Díaz assuming that he would not get the majority alone.

He has also questioned that Sánchez – whom he has not explicitly mentioned at any time – has advanced precisely that appointment with the polls to July 23 without having given "the opportunity to debate" on the mistakes made in the regional and municipal and that, despite having wanted to be "actor" of that campaign that has ended in "defeat", He surrounded himself on Wednesday with his deputies and senators to give him "an exaggerated applause." "The flight of those who go forward is very dangerous, we cannot live politics as a casino, with bets every day (...). You cannot make a party a personal organization," he warned.

In his speech at a ceremony held this Thursday in Madrid in which former ministers José Luis Corcuera and César Antonio Molina were present, Redondo has harshly censured the concessions that the coalition has made to the Catalan independence movement in this legislature. Specifically, he criticized the "unprecedented instrumentalization of the Criminal Code" with the modification of the crimes of sedition and embezzlement "with name and surname" to benefit those convicted of the illegal referendum, something he considered "aberrant" and "typical of Bolivarian governments".

Even firmer has been his disapproval of the pacts with Bildu, a party of which he said that "it has not renounced the macabre legacy of ETA", but that "it continues to vindicate its struggle" and "giving an epic tint to that terrorist action that caused us so much pain". "He has not made any rectification, any qualification, on the contrary: the easier we make it, the more emboldened they are," lamented the former secretary general of the PSOE in the Basque Country during the years in which the greatest number of attacks occurred.

The spokesman of the collective Fernando de los Ríos has considered, in addition, that this Government has had "such a strenuous ideological overload" that it has caused that "what has been done well is not appreciated" and disgraced Sánchez who has made a campaign with announcements of measures "rally after rally" that have made it seem that "more than a certain policy" it was "a tombola". To which he has apostilled: "The worst thing that can be done is to take citizens for fools, to think that they are a flock of sheep that can be directed with the barking of a dog."

Electoral analysis

In the event organized in Madrid by the collective Fernando de los Ríos under the title of The polls have spoken in which the results of the regional and municipal elections of last Sunday have been analyzed, the former secretary of UGTCándido Méndez also intervened. The call was planned prior to the PSOE debacle and was made public after the scrutiny before Sánchez announced the advance of the general elections to July 23.

On whether Sánchez should stop leading the party, to questions from journalists Redondo has limited himself to pointing out: "What the Socialists decide." To which, however, he has apostilled: "When you lose you leave, as many have done."

For his part, former MEP Pedro Bofill has lamented that with the coalition formed by the PSOE and Unidas Podemos that has governed for more than three years "unfortunately the confrontation has sharpened". "We must strengthen the politics of consensus and put an end to the culture that has been implanted of social dissent. It's not practical, it's not beneficial and we have to overcome it," he warned.

He has also regretted without directly mentioning Sánchez that he has opted for a "presidential parliamentarism that dilutes the division of powers." In this regard, he pointed out that in this legislature 129 decree laws have been approved, which is an "exceptional figure" that corresponds to a "legislative power" of the central executive, compared to the 69 bills presented in Congress, that is, that "the exceptional has replaced the normal".

For his part, the professor of Sociology José Antonio Díaz has argued that the "significant" power lost in Sunday's elections by the PSOE, which is expected to stop governing in six autonomous communities and 28 provincial capitals, is due to the "crisis of the block strategy". "Influencing it is a mistake, we should make a different approach," he said.

He also predicted that "it is very likely" that the 23-J there is between 3% and 4% more participation, that is, between 1.5 and two million more voters, and that the difference of three points between the PP and the PSOE in the regional and municipal "increases". "There may also be surprises," he slipped, although without too much conviction, before concluding: "We have a problem."

The event, held at the Carlos de Amberes Foundation, was also attended by the former ombudsman Francisco Fernández Marugán, the former president of the Community of Madrid Joaquín Leguina and the former Extremaduran leader Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra. Other people who have not been able to go but who have expressly asked that they support the movement be recorded were the philosopher Fernando Savater, the historian Carmen Iglesias, the former minister Javier Sáenz Cosculluela, the former deputy José María Mohedano and the former Andalusian baron José Rodríguez de la Borbolla.

  • Politics
  • PSOE
  • Pedro Sanchez

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