DOES THE NEW POLICY REALLY EXIST?

USPA NEWS - Almost a decade ago, especially in Europe and, above all, in Spain, new parties appeared in politics that came “to regenerate“ democracy, suffering, according to them, from many evils, and to end corruption. Parties that came to break the prevailing bipartisanship in Western democracies, occupying empty spaces in the political spectrum of European countries; They pointed out the culprits for the lack of real democracy and, as a consequence, managed to excite the voters. In just one legislature, all these parties have been infected with the old vices of the great conservative and social democratic formations, and many of them are today the object of judicial investigation.

In Spain, where these new parties have developed with more virulence, their appearance on the political scene occurred accompanied by a mantra that penetrated the voters: the traditional parties belonged to a corrupt politician caste with little or no concern for the welfare of the citizens. To fight against this and eradicate these customs from Spanish politics, they came, especially Podemos (We Can), a party that, in coalition with Izquierda Unida (United Left) - heir to the old Spanish Communist Party - stood on the extreme left of the political arc and, in just five years, he managed to enter the Government of Spain as an indispensable partner of the Socialist Party, winner in the November 10, 2019, elections.

In five years, from heaven to hell. On the way to the Government, Podemos progressively lost support, especially from 2016, after its second presentation at the polls: from 42 deputies that it obtained in the December 2015 elections, it rose to 45 in June 2016 but fell to 33 in April 2019 and to 26 in November of the same year. What explains this loss of the trust of its voters and that, with the lowest number of deputies obtained, the party participates in the Government of Spain?

The most important reason for the loss of votes has to do with the arrival of Podemos to city councils and regional governments. Centuries of political history show that it is one thing to promise the Moon when one is in opposition and quite another to govern. The councilors of Podemos in the city councils and regional governments, who made their campaigns insisting on the need to improve social assistance, attack large fortunes, defend workers against employers and fully apply Human Rights They were soon revealed as lousy managers and that affected their image before citizens.

And not only that. Very shortly after being elected deputy in Parliament, the secretary general of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, who had become a scourge of the former conservative rulers and had harshly criticized a minister of the Popular Party - conservative - for buying a home "too expensive", he bought a villa in the Madrid municipality of Galapagar - North of the region - which cost 600,000 euros. First incongruity of a politician who assured his voters that he would never leave the working-class neighborhood where he lived then. Today he occupies the second vice-presidency of the Government of Spain, where he arrived to regenerate Spanish politics and expel corrupt politicians from power.

It was not his only incongruity: Podemos, who defended the harassment of corrupt politicians under the banner of freedom of expression, soon demanded police protection from the Spanish Government in the home of Pablo Iglesias. Escraches yes, but for others, he seemed to think formation. "The escraches are a democratic mechanism so that those responsible for the crisis feel a minimum part of its consequences," wrote Pablo Iglesias on social networks on April 12, 2013. That same year, Irene Montero, Iglesias's wife, with whom he shared today she is present in the Council of Ministers, where she heads the Department of Equality, affirmed that "escrache is not harassment: it is to challenge the deputies so that they talk to us and not turn their backs on us." And the current Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, also leader of Podemos, pointed out then that "the escraches are the only weapon that people who suffer the consequences of the crisis have to defend themselves."

More recently, on the occasion of the Coronavirus pandemic that affects the entire planet and, especially, Spain, which today is the European country with the highest number of infections, the situation of nursing homes was at the center of the debates. Between February and June 2020, when the confinement to which the Spanish population was subjected was lifted, the elderly were the main victims of COVID-19. In particular, the elderly confined in residences, whose workers complained about the lack of means and protection measures against the Coronavirus. The situation in the residences was adopted as an argument by Podemos to criticize capitalism that maintains health centers in precarious conditions. But he conveniently forgot that the second vice president of the Government and secretary general of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, is the head of the Spanish Government in welfare matters. Iglesias never went to any residence to inquire about the situation They were denouncing.

The problems of the new left are no exception in Spanish politics. The two major Spanish parties, the conservative Popular Party and the Socialist Party, have responded to the judges for corrupt behavior by some of their leaders. Also the one that for many years was the main Catalan nationalist party, Convergencia i Unió, appeared in Court for corruption. What is surprising about the new left is that, having defended political regeneration, it took so little time to catch the ills of the big parties.

This is reflected by the sculptor turned politician Fernando Barredo (Madrid, 1960), who, in statements to the digital newspaper El Español, explained that "I entered Podemos because 15-M was exciting to me and I believed that the time for social changes had come. The 15-M was a citizen movement born from a demonstration held on May 15, 2011 and whose objective was to promote a more participatory democracy, away from the bipartisan Popular Party-Socialist Party and the dominance of banks and corporations, as well as to demand a true division of powers. During that night and the weeks that followed, all the cities of Spain hosted spontaneous camps of citizens. Initiatives emerged from that movement, one of which materialized in Podemos. "The party came with some founding principles that I found commendable and I thought it would be a great tool to alleviate the effects of the social gap," he adds. And he concludes: “They have forgotten all that. Now they are professionals of the policy.“

That professionalization drinks from the worst vices of Spanish politics. And that has consequences for the system. As the summons to leaders of Podemos for allegedly irregular practices grow, the greater the interest of the party in controlling the judges. Also to the press. The inexcusable condition of Podemos to enter the Government of Spain was to control public radio-television, from where the coalition projects its particular campaign against the Monarchy. The requests for impartiality of the public radio-television workers themselves or the criticisms of other media, of the opposition parties and of many citizens are of no use. Today, RTVE (Radio-Televisión Española, in its acronym in Spanish) is a medium controlled by the left wing of the social-communist Government and a propaganda weapon for its postulates.

For many analysts, the ultimate goal of Podemos is to dismantle the institutions and replace them with others made in their image and likeness. That would be the purpose of the recent criticisms of the Spanish democracy by the second vice president of the Spanish Government and secretary general of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias. "There is no situation of full political and democratic normality" in Spain, he said recently, in a statement to a Catalan radio station, applauded by the Russian Government. "It is obvious that we live in a democracy that can be improved and, precisely because of that, we exist," added Iglesias, who denounced "threats." "The debate is that we have a democracy that needs to be improved," insisted the second vice president of the Spanish Government. In reality, he concluded, “what [the opposition parties] like is that the Head of State is not accountable, a Judicial Power that is not renewed, that there are puppeteers or rappers who go to jail or that the powers that be media depend on economic powers and are arms of power.“

And while Iglesias projects his criticism of the system, the Socialist part of the Spanish Government is silent. President Pedro Sánchez's desire to stay in power for as long as possible makes him ignore the criticism of his second vice president and the clamor that, from a wide sector of the Socialist Party and from the diplomatic corps, demands the dismissal of Pablo Iglesias for the damage, perhaps irreparable, that his words have done to the prestige and credibility of Spain.

The new policy is not so new. It is infected with the vices of the great social democratic parties, puts its partisan and personal interests before the common good, and undermines the foundations of the society it serves. The new revolution is no longer brewing in the streets but in the dark offices of power.