Sumar Movement is moving towards its reconversion to a traditional political party after the frustrated attempt to become a broad platform that would bring together all the formations of the transformative left. The formation already has the organizational document ready that specifies on paper a reality that already works in practice and that will be consolidated with the new assembly scheduled for March. At that meeting, the replacement of Yolanda Díaz as party leader will also be resolved: her position will be held by two people.
Barely a few months had passed since the constituent assembly of Sumar as the seed of a broad front of the left when the documents approved in that conclave had already remained on empty paper. The way in which the Díaz project negotiated the construction of the political platform with the political parties and the results of elections that took place in the first part of the year led in June to the resignation of the second vice president of the Government as general coordinator and forced to a reformulation of the initial hypothesis.
The document that the new assembly will vote on recognizes the problems experienced by the project in recent months. “This electoral cycle has shown that the accumulation of forces and collective political capital that guaranteed the reissue of the progressive government and whose key was Sumar, was not transferred under the same conditions to the rest of the electoral events,” the text maintains.
The result of the political cycle had “two consequences,” the document adds: the resignation of Yolanda Díaz and the “need to update the Sumar hypothesis for the short and medium term.” “The political scenario changes, but the elements that called for the construction of Sumar do not change,” he summarizes.
This update of the hypothesis will be done on several levels. On the one hand, it repositions Movimiento Sumar as another party, on an equal footing with the rest of the forces and not as the head or umbrella of the coalition. And on the other hand, it proposes a response to Díaz’s decision to resign from organic leadership to focus on his task as Government and try to recover the image that his management earned him during the last legislature.
To do this, the new party will not choose a single name to replace the vice president, but will create a collegiate leadership of two people, similar to the one that the comuns have just elected in their congress. The party is also changing its way of electing its bodies and voting on new documents: it will do so through a system of delegates and not through a consultation with the membership as a year ago.
However, Movimiento Sumar does make clear in its documents its predisposition to hold primaries in the processes of convergence with other political formations. “Although the agreements related to these processes will be developed without a priori, seeking processes of confluence and unity, we do believe it is important to indicate that Movimiento Sumar will promote these processes to be addressed with primary systems, with rules that are inclusive and open to civil society,” says the text.
The alliance policy is precisely one of the key elements of the document and what Movimiento Sumar wants to be from now on. Although the formation renounces being the umbrella of the left, it continues to claim itself as a formation with the vocation of forging alliances both between parties and between social movements.
“Military in Movement Sumar must always start from the fact that we are part of a broader ecosystem, with colleagues from other very diverse organizations. We do not compete for brands or visibility. We build, we cooperate, we prioritize the agreement and the proposal. We want to be useful to the territories in which we are, contribute ideas, strengthen the Sumar Movement by also strengthening other spaces,” says the document, whose drafting has been led by the Secretary of Organization, Lara Hernández.
That is why the document establishes double militancy, with which important positions in the Sumar Movement are already held, such as the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, who is also a leader of the Comuns.
Deployment in all territories except Catalonia
The territorial question has provoked intense debates in the formation since its foundation. Largely because many of the parties that are in the coalition are territorially rooted, such as Más Madrid, los comuns in Catalonia or Compromís in the Valencian Community. Before the constituent assembly last March, Sumar clashed with Mónica García’s party, which viewed the state party’s intentions to create a structure in the Community of Madrid with suspicion.
After a long debate in recent months, the document makes it clear that Movimiento Sumar will create a territorial structure with constituent assemblies in all the autonomous communities and will also do so, if necessary, on a local basis. With the only exception of Catalonia, where the party has an agreement with the comuns. “It is the space for the political participation of people registered in Movimiento Sumar,” establishes the text.
In the rest, the party will deploy although with express recognition in its document of the “experience, strong territorial implantation and accumulated political capital” by forces that it describes as “sisters” in territories such as “Madrid, Asturies, Valencian Country or Balearic Islands”. “The structures and bodies of Movimiento Sumar will act in permanent and close coordination and collaboration with these forces in all their political action, recognizing their position in the progressive space of the territory. These recognitions and those of other territories and forces will be subject to the founding autonomous debates,” he explains. It also makes mention of “consolidated and deep-rooted municipalist experiences.” In Madrid, for example, the autonomous process will begin immediately after the state assembly.
In Galicia and Euskadi, Movimiento Sumar already has a created structure. Both territories held respective assemblies last November, although in these two cases they are parties with their own legal personality, federated to the state entity.
After the publication of the documents by the leadership of Movimiento Sumar this week, the party opened a calendar that will last until the end of January so that the members of the formation (militants on the day of payment of their fee) can propose alternative documents, amendments to the officers and propose candidacies for the general coordination, both state and regional.
With this, Movimiento Sumar begins the process of an assembly with which it not only seeks to reorient the hypotheses that failed in the middle of this year, but also to recover the political initiative after a very hard year to which the case of Íñigo Errejón was added this October , who resigned from the party amid accusations of sexual harassment.
#Sumar #Movement #classic #match #people #charge #Yolanda #Díaz
