The resignation of the Budgets weighs down Yolanda Díaz and shows her "management problem"

Alvaro Carvajal Madrid

Madrid

Updated Sunday, March 17, 2024-02:06

• Catalonia Why has Díaz not been able to prevail over the commoners?

• Politics Sumar criticizes that the PSOE renounces the Budgets: "The Government's obligation is to try until the end"

Thursday.

The result of the vote on the Amnesty Law, Puigdemont's condition for there to be a legislature, is announced in Congress, and Pedro Sánchez,

María Jesús Montero

and

Félix Bolaños

stand up to applaud.

They smile and celebrate a parliamentary victory that has cost a lot of effort.

Among them, Yolanda Díaz remains seated and with a serious face.

She is the image that reveals Sumar's state of mind.

She is proof that the Government's minority partner is affected.

The week has placed Díaz and the space he leads in the eye of the hurricane after the commons, his Catalan allies, have knocked down the budgets of

Pere Aragonès

.

This unleashed a chain reaction that plunged the legislature into uncertainty.

There will be early elections in Catalonia on May 12 and, faced with this scenario that fuels the eternal dispute between ERC and Junts, the PSOE made the decision just a few hours later to renounce approving the General State Budgets for 2024.

One of the great victims of this spiral is Sumar, who paradoxically is also the one who caused it.

PSOE and ERC were quick to blame the vice president for not having done more to prevent the blockade of the

commons

in Catalonia and delved into the fact that what happened has revealed that she "has a problem managing her space."

She cannot give orders to prevent scenarios that could later turn against her party.

Which is what has ended up happening.

The paralysis of the Government's accounts suddenly collapses Sumar's strategy for the coming months and exposes him to facing three very important elections - Basque, Catalan and European - in a condition of political weakness, since he has no great achievements to sell to the voters to claim their progressive imprint in this coalition Government.

Beyond the good unemployment results of the Ministry led by Díaz, the legislature is moving forward without the social and green agenda being able to find a place among so much controversy.

The amnesty, the

Koldo case

, the challenges of Junts, the parliamentary weakness of a majority united only by the rejection of the PP and Vox... Everything conditions each step but now that the Budgets were going to change the pace to be able to talk about the issues most relevant of Sumar, where he was going to stick his head out to let his voice be heard, he has fallen.

Hence the deep discomfort in Sumar and the long faces of Díaz the day after.

The minority partner reproaches the PSOE for having decided to renounce the accounts "unilaterally" and reproaches that citizens "cannot wait" to "continue gaining rights", underlining that the Executive's "obligation" was to "try until the end."

Step changed

It was clearly not Sumar's plan.

The week began for them with the focus on the accounts and their demands to reach an agreement now that the amnesty was going ahead.

Those from Díaz began the ritual of setting their own profile, demanding "more ambition" and verbalizing demands that sound wonderful to the ears of the left-wing voter: getting their hands on housing by improving the rental price index, regulating tourist and seasonal apartments and investing more in public works;

increasing the tax pressure on banking and energy companies;

giving more money for the dependency;

raising maternity and paternity leave to 20 weeks;

increasing the collection of corporate tax and increasing the revaluation of the IPREM to increase the social benefits that depend on it...

That was the plan.

Make, as Díaz would say, “useful politics” that impacts people's daily lives.

They could talk about all these issues as many times as they wanted before the media, but it is only in the negotiation of the Budgets that they can assert their weight and their votes before the PSOE to achieve those objectives.

And he was at it, asking for "ambition", emphasizing that the legislature "is not about holding on but moving forward" and that it was time to "take advantage."

All this has been replaced by a devilish electoral cycle that has been preceded in the worst way for Sumar: with a huge setback in Galicia, with zero seats.

First come the Basques, where the prospects are bad and there is a risk of even being left out of Parliament due to the division of the vote with Podemos.

Then the Catalans will arrive, where the common people do have the strength to overcome the challenge.

Even with the reinforcement given to the progressive electorate by having paralyzed the development of the Hard Rock project, which allows it to place itself at the center of the debate.

If Puigdemont does not manage to return the axis of the campaign back to the

process

.

Those two results, plus the one from Galicia, will be the backpack that hangs on Sumar's back in the most important challenge ahead: the European Championships on June 9.

And it is because Podemos has presented these elections as a plebiscite in the space of the alternative left on Díaz and on the role that the

purples

have to play .

It is a one-on-one competition between the two and those from

Ione Belarra

have done the rest by placing

Irene Montero

as a candidate.

It is true that the context that has been generated does not help Podemos in the least, but it has in its favor the wear and tear that Díaz is suffering since he emerged as the great hope of the left.

Many things have happened since Magariños and there are few that have pushed his leadership.

The vast majority has revealed a force overshadowed by the PSOE and with problems in differentiating itself from Sánchez, and that is in decline in voting intention.

The

CIS

gives it 9.2% when on 23-J it had 12.3%.