Podemos set to consolidate its breakthrough in Spanish state elections

Teresa Rodriguez (leader of Podemos in Andalucia) and Pablo Iglesias (national leader and prime ministerial candidate)

Teresa Rodriguez (leader of Podemos in Andalucia) and Pablo Iglesias (national leader and prime ministerial candidate)

Dave Kellaway from Hackney Left Unity reports.

A woman pulls on her sweater. Guitar soundtrack plays. We see her modest apartment. A birthday cake showing she is 42 years old. Her two kids. The husband or father is not shown. She goes off to work and we see her in town. The camera moves to her bed which is covered with banknotes. It is her salary. The film then shows the notes disappearing as rent, utilities and other costs are taken out and we see the small amount she has to live on. Cut to shots of Iglesias, the Podemos leader going into a mass meeting. A few demands go across the screen: Damned caste – Blessed people, Increase the minimum wage, Equal parental leave for mums and dads, Universal free healthcare, Free public nurseries from 0 to 5, A country that is with you – Podemos.
It is such brilliant communication that you would get most of it through the images. There is a reference to a popular Spanish TV programme Algo pasa con Maria. It uses the same title.
See it here.
Now think back to the TUSC election campaign video at the May British general election. Okay it was not completely terrible. It was a mix of talking heads – mostly activists who spoke about how awful things were and how we had to do something through supporting TUSC. There was a huge amount of words but it was visually rather boring and the real lives of the people were reduced pretty much to slogans familiar to the left.
What the Podemos video demonstrates is the successful way this party has won support for an anti-austerity programme through talking in a way that people understand. The party was only formed in January 2014 as a response to the need of the indignados mass street movement to find some political expression. The latest surveys suggest it could win between 17 and 19% of the votes in the 20th December general elections. It could become the third biggest party and there is even a small chance it could get more votes than the PSOE – the socialist party that is more or less like New Labour. Such a defeat by a party to its left would have a big impact on Spanish politics and is one of Podemos’s declared objectives for these elections. Turnout is expected to be around 80% and there are a number of undecided voters who could move to Podemos in the last days.
Current polls suggest that Rajoy’s right of centre PP (People’s Party) will be the biggest party and thereby benefit from an undemocratic 30 seat bonus to help it form a majority. However depending on how many votes the new right of centre ‘clean up’ party Cuidadanos gets there may well be a stalemate or hung parliament. The ruling elites in Spain were quite canny in backing this new right of centre ‘podemos’ because it has prevented Pablo Iglesias’s rather optimistic dream of gathering transversal votes from the centre right parties. Indeed all the surveys suggest that Podemos support is firmly anchored on the left and is mainly getting votes from the PSOE electorate or the Spanish Communist party-led coalition the IU (Izquierda Unida). The latter is holding on to its 3 to 5% of the left electorate.
A year ago Iglesias and his leadership team were talking about winning the overall elections on the basis of a few polls that gave them up to 27% of voting intentions. Today’s interview in El Pais sees him still talking about governing after Sunday but this is election talk. The real trophy would be to beat the PSOE. In the last six months Podemos has been as low as 12% so there is a real remontada – a comeback. Iglesias’s brilliance in TV debates is helping. He won the El Pais (= Guardian) debate with the other party leaders (except Rajoy) with a 47% after debate poll. The Cuidadanos leader, Rivera, was particularly poor. Rajoy has been dubbed the plasma premier because of his reluctance to debate or meet people. Although he did agree to last night’s head to head with the PSOE leader Sanchez since it suits him to reduce the election to a two party race. He was lambasted as lacking common decency for his refusal to accept any responsibility for the Barcenas scandal which involved his PP treasurer having a double accounting procedure to funnel secret cash payments to party leaders. Corruption, along with austerity and constitutional questions are the key themes of the campaign.
Mass support for Podemos was shown in the 12000 strong rally in Madrid on Sunday. Ada Colau, the radical nationalist mayor of Barcelona spoke, partly in Catalan, on the platform with Iglesias. This was significant because Podemos has been reluctant to ally with radical nationalists. Iglesias accepted the right to vote for independence but tended to argue against it on a line of abstract unity of working people in the whole of Spain – rather like those on the left opposed to the radical Scottish independence movement. Such equivocation meant Podemos was weaker in Catalonia than in other regions so it was obliged to ally with radical nationalist forces first in the local elections and now in the general elections. This is a progressive step and will strengthen Podemos.

Most recent poll
Whatever happens on Sunday the situation is likely to be unstable. If the polls are correct and Rajoy wins it will be on the basis of a much reduced majority and as a coalition. His government is pledged to bring in another 30 billion euros of cuts. An economic recovery driven by lower oil prices and increased tourism due to terrorist threats elsewhere is underway. However there is still the reality of wages being reduced from 50% to 45% of GDP during the last parliament. A stalemate would obviously increase the political crisis and there could well be a push for constitutional change too.
An increased vote for Podemos would help build resistance. The anti-capitalist current in Podemos is calling for a post-election conference to discuss strategy and action in the new situation. How to relate to the crisis in the PSOE and IU and link up with radical nationalist currents? Another important question is how to link the excellent electoral work the leadership team does with organising and building social struggles in the workplaces and communities.

After the elections in another article we will look more closely at the strengths and weaknesses of Podemos and what we can learn from it.



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