The newborn confluence of the left Por Andalucía (PorA) has taken its first steps in an erratic manner. After several months of tough negotiations between Izquierda Unida and Podemos to bridge the differences between formations and the “material error” made in registering the brand with the Andalusian Electoral Board (which leaves out two parties – Podemos and Alianza Verde – from the six that were going to coalesce), now the “internal noise” begins, as the candidate for the presidency of the bloc, Inmaculada Nieto, described it, and also the external noise, since many politicians have spoken about the problems who are having to face the ‘broad front’ promoted by the second vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz.
At the moment, Por Andalucía is trying to get by as best it can and wants to focus on campaigning. This is what Nieto has commented, although he has had to deal with comments of all kinds, some expected, such as those from the members of the regional government in office, and others not so much. If yesterday it was the leader of San Telmo, the popular Juanma Moreno, who warned that Díaz’s “first experiment” “has shipwrecked in a grotesque way”, an idea to which the leader of Ciudadanos, Juan Marín, was added, qualifying the event of the inscription as a “regrettable spectacle”, today Pablo Iglesias, who was the leader of the purple formation at the national level, has joined the criticism.
“It’s a horror. It makes us ashamed. The worst way to start something that is necessary in this country, which is the broad front and accumulate illusion. It has started in the worst possible way,” he said.
Nieto has not let Iglesias’s criticism pass, stating that “when analyzes are carried out from afar, perhaps not everything is appreciated in its fair measure” and insisting “in the gatherings there is a little extra testosterone”, and she believes that ” you don’t have to get into those entanglements”, because “all of that is what turns people away from politics”.
However, despite everything, there are those who continue to launch calls for unity, such as the one made by Íñigo Errejón, visible head of Más País, so that the confluence can mobilize the left-wing electorate and stop the right and the extreme right embodied by Vox in the next elections, a trend that has been picked up by the majority of voting intention surveys.
“We are not going to spend an ounce of energy on things that do not serve people. We are going to talk about health, employment, education and housing”, declared the candidate for the Board, since she has insisted that she is “focused” on “telling Andalusia that there is an alternative government”.
However, it remains to be resolved how the two parties that were left out of registration with the Electoral Board and whose appeal for rectification was dismissed by it are going to be integrated into the confluence. These are Podemos and Alianza Verde, formations that do not appear in the document and that, therefore, would not receive the relevant electoral subsidies as members of the group. The distribution in the representative bodies would also remain up in the air, despite the fact that Nieto confirmed that his deputies would occupy the positions agreed upon in the last in extremis negotiation reached last Friday.
It was yesterday afternoon when members of Podemos warned that IU would not comply with what was agreed. “The negotiations are in good hands. There is a technical team from all the coalition organizations that is working to make the political agreement viable in the area established by law,” Nieto insisted.
Por Andalucía was born with a “purely Andalusian” spirit, in order to promote change within the region where social policies become the axes on which management pivots. We will have to wait to find out how events unfold and if, finally, the sum of the six leftist forces, including IU, Equo, Más País Andalucía, the Andalusian People’s Initiative, Podemos and Alianza Verde, overlap to the first falls and get the support of the Andalusians in a united way.
This mobilization has been questioned by Teresa Rodríguez, leader of Adelante Andalucía, who considers that the situation is “an example of a somewhat serious improvisation for someone who is running for a position of responsibility and that discourages left-wing voters.”
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