Podemos
cracks up after electoral setback
Clash
pits ‘more predictable, less sexy’ against hardline true
believers.
By DIEGO TORRES
7/5/16, 5:36 AM CET Updated 7/5/16, 6:18 AM CET
MADRID — A bitter
blame game is underway in the ranks of Spain’s far-left Podemos
after it failed to beat the Socialists into second place in elections
on June 26 and lost more than a million votes since a ballot six
months earlier.
Pablo Iglesias, the
ponytailed leader of the anti-austerity movement, which emerged in
just two years as a serious challenger to the venerable Socialist
Workers’ Party’s (PSOE) hegemony on the Spanish left, said the
election marked the end of an era.
“It’s the end of
the Blitz[krieg],” Iglesias said in a lecture at Madrid’s
Complutense University, and the start of “trench warfare” which
Podemos has no guarantee of winning.
Podemos (We Can)
will now have to prove itself in Congress, where it has less
experience than its rivals and holds a weaker than expected position.
If the past week is any guide, it will also struggle to maintain
unity among its many parties and factions.
Podemos, which
linked up with the communist United Left ahead of June’s vote, came
in third with 71 seats in Congress, after acting Prime Minister
Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party with 137 seats and Pedro Sánchez’s
PSOE with 85 seats. Albert Rivera’s centrist Ciudadanos (Citizens)
was fourth with 32 seats.
The results put
Rajoy in a stronger position to renew his mandate — even if it’s
with a weak, minority government — and keep PSOE as the main
opposition party.
That took Podemos by
surprise and kicked off infighting among its leaders. One of the
party’s co-founders, Juan Carlos Monedero, pointed the finger in a
blog post at the campaign’s direction and a lack of ideological
authenticity.
‘Internal wars
bleed us, burn us and annoy us’ — Pablo Echenique
It was a direct
attack on Podemos’ number two and campaign leader, Íñigo Errejón,
who tempered the party’s usually more extreme leftist messages. For
his part, Errejón partly blamed the alliance with United Left,
saying it hadn’t worked out.
Both Podemos’
Iglesias and Unidos leader Alberto Garzón defended the alliance
after the elections, arguing that it would have been worse if they
had run separately and vowed to stick together.
Social networks were
full of aggressive commentaries from supporters and critics of the
alliance, prompting an intervention by Pablo Echenique, Podemos’
organizational chief, who tried to end the blame game by threatening
to “clear the weeds,” a reference to disloyal party members.
“Internal wars bleed us, burn us and annoy us,” he said in an
internal message leaked to the press.
Missed opportunity
What really bothers
Podemos leaders is that they may missed a window of opportunity
offered by the economic crisis to beat the establishment, a chance
they may not have again.
When Iglesias
analyzed the defeat on a TV show, he rejected the organization of the
electoral campaign and the alliance with Unidos as potential causes
of the electoral disappointment.
Instead, he pointed
at a less controversial reason: the existence of a large group of
citizens who were planning to vote for Podemos as a way to shake up
the establishment, but were afraid to cast their vote as intended
when it seemed as if the far-left would actually seize power.
Podemos’
leadership also commissioned a poll into the causes of its failure
and asked local party groups to have their say on what went wrong.
Among the possible
reasons suggested by party leadership were Podemos’ continued calls
for independence referendums in Catalonia and other breakaway-minded
regions, the way it handled coalition negotiations after December’s
election — its out-and-out rejection of a potential Socialist prime
minister —its links with Venezuela, the alliance with United Left,
and the conduct of the electoral campaign.
There was no mention
of the performance of Iglesias. Polls put him second behind Rajoy in
terms of unpopularity and according to some surveys, citizens see him
as “arrogant.”
‘It may well be
that we win the elections in four years or that we knock ourselves
out’ — Pablo Iglesias
Iglesias, however,
said on Monday he had more backing than ever as Podemos leader.
As long as he stays
in the role, Iglesias will have to deal with disputes over the
party’s future direction, especially its alliance with Unidos. Many
in the party want to stick to far-left, anti-capitalist ideals while
others would like to build a more moderate political force with
broader appeal among the middle classes.
“The possibility
that Podemos can rule Spain in the future is not excluded at all, but
it will be a drastically different Podemos from the one we have now,”
said Errejón at the same lecture at Complutense University on
Monday.
According to
Errejón, the Podemos that can win elections will be a “more
predictable and less sexy” organization, with stronger appeal among
a wider electorate.
Working out those
differences will take place at a party conference scheduled for next
year, but which will be probably be brought forward to the last
quarter of 2016, after regional elections in Galicia and the Basque
Country.
Iglesias on Monday
summed up his party’s uncertain future, saying: “It may well be
that we win the elections in four years or that we knock ourselves
out.”
Authors:
Diego Torres
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