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Podemos delay tactics

By Euro Weekly News Media • Published: 16 Jul 2016 • 5:00

NICOLAS MADURO: The Venezuelan president unable to accept election defeat.

PODEMOS is still licking its wounds after failing to cruise into second place on June 26. Did Venezuela frighten voters off? Venezuela is a mess but it’s debatable whether this is because president Nicolas Maduro took the advice of the country’s erstwhile assessors – Pablo Iglesias, Juan Carlos Monedero and Iñigo Errejon – or because he ignored it.

Maduro is incapable of accepting election defeat and now wants to dissolve parliament. Not so very different from Podemos which, confident of a more acceptable result, precipitated another poll. And they got that wrong, too.

 

Sick note

THERE is just one way that the country’s political parties can pick their way through the minefield of red lines that prevented agreements after the December election.

It’s not a sure thing, but Mariano Rajoy might finally harvest the votes of Ciudadanos. Again it’s no dead cert but the PNV Basque party, which is centre-right as well as nationalist, might lend a helping hand, as could the Canary Island MP’s. Rajoy could then find his way out of the maze if a couple of PSOE MP’s has a diplomatic headache on the day of the investiture vote. Unfortunately no one wants to be the one to do it, so pity the poor so-and-so who is genuinely ill or gives birth that day…

 

Make friends time

THE Partido Popular and Mariano Rajoy are laying off Pedro Sanchez for the time being. All’s fair in love and war and politics as well, but it’s no secret that although the PP was the most voted party in last month’s elections Rajoy needs all the help that he can get. 

There will be time for the backbiting, exchanges of insults and the general yah-boo-sucks inseparable from parliamentary politics once some kind of government has been cobbled together.

 

Looking ahead

JUAN CARLOS MONEDERO, in upbeat mode, recently declared that Pablo Iglesisas would be voted president in the next elections. No doubt that this is why Spain’s remaining parties are doing their damnedest to ensure that there won’t be another election for four years. Moncloa’s front door key. And see how long he lasts in isolation.

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Comments

    • kally

      25 July 2016 • 16:10

      If the PP gets back in, we’re in for another four years of political, social and economic stagnation where none of the changes Spain urgently needs from grass-roots up will even be discussed. We’ll carry on just making up the numbers in the EU with none of the huge steps made during Felipe González’s time. Unemployment (or, more likely, cesspit-quality jobs and wages that barely double the average mortgage and where your contract only runs for a few months) will just continue as it is.
      I don’t think Sánchez is as complacent a leader as I would have expected from the other face of the ‘caste’ coin, so he could be a good president; Podemos is too big for its boots, but has great ideas socially (they just need to be tempered with financial sense, and for them to be reminded it’s not just the working class and the poor who have suffered through the PP, but the middle classes, too, and prosperity – not just survival – is what Spain and its people need). Monadero’s an intellectual; he might have provided the necessary influence. Basically, Podemos needs to get off its high horse, agree to work as a partnership with the PSOE but learn to compromise and be a bit more humble; C’s needs to accept defeat gracefully but work closely with the PSOE as constructive opposition. The tug-of-war over the Catalunya referendum isn’t Spain’s greatest concern, so they need to let that drop for a while and tell the Govern, “give us a chance, and if you think we’ve failed, THEN we’ll discuss the CatRef.”

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