Podemos and Yolanda Díaz try to unravel the negotiations for an agreement before the launch of Sumar this Sunday. The second vice president’s negotiating team moved this weekend a proposal for a political declaration to the formation of Ione Belarra with a written commitment that the lists for the general elections will be decided by primaries but with the precision that the specific mechanism will be it will negotiate multilaterally with the rest of the formations in the political space. Podemos, for its part, wants the text to reflect a commitment by both parties to hold primaries that are “open to the public in which whoever they want can vote.”
On the afternoon of this Monday, the secretary of the Organization of Podemos, Lilith Verstrynge, has called Díaz’s chief of staff, Josep Vendrell, to try to get closer after the unsuccessful talks in recent days. What transcends this call, according to the sources consulted, is that the differences remain on the same point: Podemos wants a minimum agreement with Sumar that establishes that the primaries must be open, while the vice president’s team insists that The concretion of the mechanism must be among the 15 formations with which they have been speaking since January, among which are Izquierda Unida, Más País, Más Madrid or Compromís. Some regional formations are opposed to holding open and universal primaries.
The text being handled is a declaration “to win a country”, a draft that could be signed by all the forces involved in the process, but which can in turn serve to provide those from Belarra with the necessary guarantees to attend the act of 2 of April. On this text, the two parties have been exchanging alternative wordings since Sunday without reaching an agreement that satisfies both parties.
Sources from Podemos point out after the conversation this afternoon that Yolanda Díaz’s team has informed them that, as of today, “they are not going to close an agreement with Podemos to hold primaries open to all citizens in which they can vote anyone who wants.” Sources from Sumar convey in parallel that they are willing to sign that declaration that includes the commitment of primaries but they defend that the rules of the game cannot be established by them and by Podemos, but rather have to be decided between all the parties.
In the exchange of proposals that it has given in recent days, Podemos came to propose a specific wording, with some general approaches, on the political reality of the left and, from there, it included the following paragraph: “The process of The dialogue that Sumar began in January with the whole of society must continue with an agreement with Podemos and lead to a process of effective participation, which puts democracy at the center, with the holding of primaries open to all citizens in which anyone can participate, agreed between Podemos and Sumar, with a new census and that have all the security measures to guarantee the transparency of the process. The spirit and will to work of this dialogue process is the sincere cooperation between Podemos and Sumar”.
According to sources familiar with the negotiations, this was the response to a proposal for primaries “within a multilateral framework” that is agreed upon by all parties. “Sumar, from the first day, has insisted that the citizenry will have a voice and will participate in primaries to elect their representatives, whose concretion will have to be done multilaterally,” the negotiating team reported.
