Esquerra enters the melee with the vice president after the landing of Sumar, which arouses misgivings between EH Bildu and elBNG
It was a phrase that caused murmurs and left a bitter residue. “Before adding, you have to listen,” said Esquerra’s spokesman, Gabriel Rufián, before entering Congress last Wednesday, in a clear allusion to the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz. A modality in which the Republican deputy has specialized in Congress, but which has ended up showing the misgivings that exist among the left-wing nationalist formations (especially the Catalan sovereignists) towards Sumar, Díaz’s political project, which they perceive as a threat by the electorate that could rob them in the next general election. And at a time, moreover, when they were benefiting from the withdrawal of Podemos from the regional parliaments.
The puja to the vice president did not go unnoticed in the debate on the state of the nation. She could not defend herself from the rostrum, since she was not called to participate in the plenary session. But Pedro Sánchez, in the middle of a hard face to face with Rufián, gave him a cape: «What obsession do you have with the second vice president of the Government of Spain?».
It is no secret that the personal relationship between Díaz and Rufián is not good. However, the vice president does not throw in the towel and recognizes the need to collaborate with Esquerra’s “compañeras and compañeros” in a legislature in which the sovereignists are a key force thanks to its thirteen deputies.
Although on many occasions, ERC has used its parliamentary strength as a hammer to try to knock down some of the coalition government’s initiatives. Especially painful for Díaz was the Republicans’ refusal of the labor reform, his star project of this term and which ended up going ahead only thanks to an erroneous vote by deputy Alberto Casero, from the PP. What avoided a greater evil, the resignation of the also Minister of Labor, as she herself recognized days later in an interview in Ser.
Rufián was then in charge of adding fuel to the fire, assuring that the reform was, in reality, “a make-up”, and affirming that his party “does not negotiate or vote for personal projects”. Just at a time when the vice president was preparing to present Sumar, her listening process for the next six months and with which she hopes to form a “broad front” that is “a winner.”
Díaz, who prefers not to speak in public about these issues, took it out on Rufián on July 8, during the presentation of the platform in Madrid. He promised the 5,000 people who attended its premiere another way of doing things. «I know that you are tired of noise, of voting against a labor reform even though it is changing people’s lives. Politics is something else », he settled.
In the background of this struggle is pure and hard political tactics. The leaders of Esquerra Oriol Junqueras and Pere Aragonès have put the red belt of Barcelona in the spotlight of their slogans. With their commitment to dialogue with the central government and the parking of the ‘unilateral road’, they seek to drag a fishing ground of votes that has traditionally been in the hands of the PSOE and in which Sumar could thrive if Diaz’s new message sinks in.
Its objective is to achieve an electoral mass with which to stop depending on Junts to govern, the pro-independence formation with which they share the Government of the Generalitat. But the problem is that Díaz’s “broad front” is designed to fish for support in those areas. As an example, the commons of Ada Colau, faithful to the vice president, equal or better the republicans in Barcelona, Hospitalet, Badalona or Sabadell. Four of the five most populous municipalities in Catalonia.
election hurdle
In the case of EHBildu, Sumar is perceived as a new actor to take into account despite the relevant situation they enjoy in the Basque Parliament against Podemos (21 parliamentarians against 6 of the purple). Now they study Díaz’s movements in terms of electoral calculation, although they do not fear that a “broad front” of the left will subtract votes from him in the Basque Country, while they perceive that they have more and more weight in Congress.
In the case of the BNG, the leader of the formation, Ana Pontón, who shared a bench with Díaz in the Galician Parliament and with whom she has a “cordial” relationship, described the labor reform as “propaganda” and urged her deputy, Néstor Rego, to vote against it. The last Galician elections left a huge space for the BNG after Podemos was erased with a stroke of the pen. Now they perceive Sumar as a new obstacle in their race to dethrone the PP of the Xunta.
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