WHEN Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Spain’s far-left Podemos, proposed to hold his party’s second Congress on the same February weekend as that of the ruling conservative Popular Party (PP) it was intended as a statement of his upstart movement’s new political stature. Yet the two events, held at sports venues just seven kilometres apart in Madrid’s southern suburbs, served to highlight the parties’ differing prospects. In a climate of self-congratulation, Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, was re-elected as the PP president, unopposed and with a Soviet-style margin of 96% of the vote of delegates. Mr Iglesias triumphed, too, but only after a bitter internal battle against his more moderate number two, Iñigo Errejón. The outcome suggests that Podemos (“We can” in Spanish) may retreat to the hard left and the politics of permanent protest.
Mr Iglesias was easily re-elected as Podemos’s secretary-general; more importantly, his political programme was approved and his allies won 37 of the 62 seats on the party’s ruling council. Mr Errejón, who looked glum at the closing ceremony on February 12th, was relegated to third place in...Continue reading
from Europe http://ift.tt/2kpXscA
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment