As Podemos is slowly revealing its program for the next parliamentary election in 2015, some observed how it slighty differed from its European elections last May, with the latest one tilting more towards the center on some important issues. Although this does not affect their integrity, it does raise some legitimate questions.
Podemos was born less than a year ago and it is commonly understood that this political party is an offshoot of the 15M movement that saw hundreds of thousands of Spaniards take the streets of all city squares in May 2011.
Its ambition has been not only to win elections like any other political party on campaign, but also to create new institutions that would change party politics forever, by making them more democratic and more direct, in other words more participatory.
But although these two goals may seem to be aligned at first, party politics, campaigning and more importantly, winning, often requires reaching for a larger electorate and more consensual policies, in other words moving towards social-democracy and away from a more revolutionary agenda.
The evolution of Podemos’ program towards the center
Although the program of Podemos for next year’s election has not been officially established yet, the numerous interviews and Podemos’ published draft allows us to foresee what it might turn out to be.
Indeed, if we compare both programs, the former being the May 2014 EU elections campaign and the latter being next year’s elections, we shall notice three main differences regarding how to deal with the public deficit, minimum wage and pensions.
In May this year, Podemos had established in its program how public debt needed to be subjected to a public audit. This means that a group of people — undetermined at the time but we could imagine elected officials or perhaps an independent entity chosen by some of the new participatory institutions that Podemos is keen on creating — wouod be commissioned to study the deficit of the central and local governments to established which part shall be considered illegitimate, or shall I say illegal, and therefore cancelled (much like what President Correa in Ecuador did in 2007). The other part of the deficit, the one not considered illegitimate would still be subjected to negociations, what is called a restructuring. This proposal also offered to eliminate article 135 of the Spanish consitution that had just been changed to fit the European Union requirements.
However, only six months later Podemos seems to have operated an important change in this regard. Regarding the policy proposals on the deficit, the (draft) program now reads the following (my own translation): “The only possible way out to this genuine vicious circle is well organized restructuring of both European and Spanish deficits, so therefore the question is not whether or not we want to do it (this means paying the debt) but rather under which conditions we want to do it, given than it is materially inevitable that sooner or later we will have to do it, that is unless we want to cause a convulsion of unimaginable consequences”.
Basically what has changed between then and now is the fact that the payment of the debt is taken as a given in Podemos’ political program and the article 135 of the Spanish Constitution is no longer at risk of being eliminated, thus accepting the framework established by the European Union.
Secondly, the proposal regarding a minimum wage went from being universal to being applicable only to those living in a “precarious situation”, much closer to what is established in today’s exisiting laws.
In May’s program, the proposal read that the universal minimum wage — universal meaning every Spanish citizen — would receive a minimum salary corresponding to the poverty threshold. However, in Podemos draft proposals for next year’s elections, there only is a question of “emergency plans” for the “underprivileged” or even ”employed people in precarious situations”. Though this proposal might enlarge today’s concept of “underprivilged” a little bit and might grant a larger safety net for those in need, it is commonly perceived as a retreat from their original plan.
Finally, the proposals on the subject of pensions have also followed a downward slope on the revolutionary scale. Not only did the first proposal offered to lower retirement age to 60 (currently 67 in Spain), it also included the economic policy proposal of reducing working hours at 35 per week. Today, the 35 hour week has been taken off the agenda and retirement age has been revised upwards to 65, only 2 years less than the actual retirement age.
Is Podemos abandoning its convictions?
My answer to this is no. To claim that Podemos is abandoning its convictions or that it is losing its identity by playing the party politics game would be of course a hasty conclusion.
First of all, we must wait and see the rest of the program once it will be established. Indeed, there is much we don’t know and these three proposals might just be the only ones affected by this electoralistic strategy that consist of moving towards the center. Plus, the fact that Podemos is willing to compromise to actually win elections might just mean that we indeed are in presence of a real political force that aims high, unlike other minoritarian political entities.
In fact, the most important aspect of Podemos may not be what their immediate policies will be if they win the elections, but rather both how they would encourage people to participate in the democratic process and how new institutions might allow this participation to happen. Perhaps beyond their program for the 2015 elections both these aspects would have long and lasting consequences in Spain and in Europe. But I’m not always this optimistic…
So why the long face?
I will admit, since this is an opinion column and I can speak freely, that although Podemos appeals to, by and large, my own political convictions, I have a hard time grasping what the attitude of certain powerful factions in Spain’s political and economic landscape is.
It is easy to see what the Conservatives presently in office feel about them. The newspapers that they own make it clear that they see Podemos as the next Bolivarian Revolution, a very bad name to call someone in Spanish mainstream politics (hey, don’t look at me, I don’t make the rules). But they represent an old trend, perhaps a faction of power and business that is losing speed.
There seems to be now, from what I can observe by living here in Madrid and by dissecting the news every day, a new, and younger, trend within maintream politics (PP, PSOE, UPyD and IU, in other words the main ones from right to left) that is replacing the old guard and as it is now one can hardly read what their allegeances are and what vision for the country and for Europe they serve. What is clear, however, is that their mentality indicates a certain level of subservience toward the EU institutions, toward the US and Israel and finally towards the almighty and borderless financial sector.
Anyone living in Spain, owning a TV set and reading the news knows that Podemos campaign owes a lot — if not everything — to a very large media coverage, perhaps even more than the opposition party (PSOE, social democrats).
One might even say that their campaign had started long before they even launched the party (officially in January 2014). Pablo Iglesias, its leader today, appeared in television and in the news and became one of the most famous talking heads in Spain long before Podemos existed.
Knowing that the media belong to large corporations where the financial sector and other business sectors have great influence (and sometimes even direct ownership), why would they promote Podemos like they did?
Perhaps it is the fact that Podemos never questions the EU which ties Spain politically and that would impede most of their proposals from being implemented. Or maybe it is the regionalisation of Spain, fitting with the EU’s vision of a federal Europe made of smaller entities (ergo the elimination of nations). Maybe I’m wrong and I should throw away Tom Ferguson’s Golden Rule of Politics that says that whoever has the gold rules. I might just be confused and I should not trust my old spidey senses that tell me when something isn’t right. We shall see. To be continued…
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