Unidas Podemos's Changing Strategy in Government
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N2 | may 2020 UNIDAS PODEMOS’S CHANGING STRATEGY IN GOVERNMENT: FROM DISRUPTION TO CONSENSUS. The coalition government commits to seeking major political and social agreements to tackle post-pandemic reconstruction · Spearheaded by the Community of Madrid, the right and far right toughen their stance to overthrow the Spanish government · Discontent on the left emerges due to the ongoing use of laws restricting freedom during lockdown Sato Díaz | @JDSato 19/05/2020 Setting the Scene A pandemic of uncertainty. The spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus around the world has brought with it growing uncertainty: the future is dark and unknown, and it is difficult to foresee what social, political and economic changes may occur in the short, medium and long term. What we can already sense is that a ferocious economic crisis is heading our way, with a dramatic slump in the macroeconomic data appearing in recent weeks. The forecasts from international institutions, governments and national banks are extremely severe. If we have learned anything as the globalized neoliberal model has taken root and expanded in the last few decades, it is that macroeconomic data do not automatically lead to social improvements for the majority of the population when they are positive, but, on the contrary, they tend to have an immediate effect on the working classes when they are negative. The impending political battle will thus be fierce in both theory and practice. We are already seeing this at all levels: geopolitically, in Europe, and, with its own atavistic tensions, in the Spanish State. A homeless person in the Azca business district in Madrid (Photograph: Álvaro Minguito/El Salto Diario) 1 In April, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung published the first article in a series that aims to analyse the trajectory of the first coalition government in the Spanish State since the Second Republic. The experiment that brought ministers from PSOE and Unidas Podemos together in a single executive at the beginning of January has attracted attention and analysis from outside Spanish borders; the European left is watching the progress of this innovative project closely. However, while the first article was being written in March, it became clear that the analysis would focus on the government’s response to one of the greatest crises in history: the COVID-19 pandemic. This focus is set to continue as the coronavirus has changed everything. Or has it? The European Union and its institutions were hesitant and member states made poorly coordinated decisions. In the previous article, we warned that during the first weeks of the health crisis, the nation state as a political unit was the only body capable of providing a coherent response to the issue. Global markets crumbled at the appearance of the coronavirus, revealing themselves to be useless as a possible solution to the problem and leaving it to public institutions to forge a medical, political, economic and social response to the disaster. Meanwhile, supra-state Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, during a organizations were slow in making press conference in Geneva (Switzerland) on 11 March 2020 (Photograph: WHO) decisions and putting them into practice. The WHO issued response guidelines that were not always taken into account by national governments. The European Union and its institutions were hesitant and member states made poorly coordinated decisions. At the European level, the debate between states and different political visions is one of the main areas of dispute and the outcome of this will depend on the solutions to the crisis that are adopted in the coming years. In Spain, society follows every European decision with interest, knowing that its future well being depends to a large extent on these decisions. The Spanish government has played a central role in defending certain stances in the European sphere, such as the mutualization of debt, in collaboration with Italy and Portugal. In the end, this idea was rejected by other countries such as Germany and the Netherlands. This dealt the government a heavy blow, but it helped to focus attention on our current situation. Following several weeks of turmoil at the start of the crisis, when some believed the time had come to drive through far-reaching social and political change, nothing suggests that this is a revolutionary moment. It may be true that the political consensus is changing, although political polarization is growing and the far right is increasingly organized around the globe. 2 Power structures are being reaffirmed. The right, the far right and the major economic centres are exerting immediate pressure to ensure that the solution does not entail losses in the distribution of dividends by large corporations. Nonetheless, the European Parliament issued a joint declaration (albeit a non-binding one) from the main political groups and families on 15 May, warning that European institutions should take the lead. With a consensus of 80 percent of the chamber in Brussels and Strasbourg, the Parliament called on the Commission to pledge to create a common fund for reconstruction that is not based on permanently indebting member states. The joint pressure that countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal are able to exert is essential to curb the influence of the so-called frugal countries and their policies in favour of austerity and against excessive public investment. In the Spanish context, politics has also shifted This opposition from the Spanish significantly. During the early weeks of the right and far right looks much pandemic, the government focused on social like the Venezuelan opposition; measures, the so-called "social shield", facing an it is worth recalling the close opposition that had been pacified by the shock of the medical tragedy. Hundreds of people were dying relationship between the Spanish on a daily basis and the images broadcast on right and far right and television reflected the extreme nature of the the most reactionary sectors moment. Little by little, the Spanish right and far in Latin America. right have picked up the pace and developed a fierce opposition. In Spain, political battles are viscerally fought and the right has seized on the current crisis as an opportunity to overthrow the coalition government. Coups are in the genes of part of the Spanish right, which has yet to cast off Francoism 45 years after the dictator's death, and this is a relevant factor to consider. Their tentacles extend throughout the powerful media outlets centralized in Madrid. It is striking that hundreds of far-right protesters have mobilized in recent days in the Salamanca district in Madrid, one of the wealthiest in the country, inhabited by a population of landlords whose political origins are in some cases linked to Spain’s Francoist past. These people are a minority among the Spanish population, but the attention granted to the far right by small-scale media outlets provides them with a mouthpiece that does not correspond proportionally to reality. Minority protests calling for A protest in Nuñez de Balboa (Madrid) on 14 May 2020 Prime Minister Sánchez to resign have (Photograph: Álvaro Minguito/El Salto Diario) spread through some cities. Among the protesters' favourite slogans are “Freedom”, as if Spain were living under a dictatorship, as if five elections had not been held in 2019 (two of them general elections) and as if the government were not the product of the parliamentary majority chosen by voters at the ballot box. People take to their balconies every day at 21:00 to bang pots and pans in protest at the government's handling of the crisis; they are loud, but not particularly numerous. This opposition from the Spanish right and far right looks much like the Venezuelan opposition; it is worth recalling the close relationship between the Spanish right and far right and the most reactionary sectors in Latin America. They want to use the coronavirus tragedy to topple Pedro 3 Sánchez's government. These protests remain small, and, objectively, they would be irrelevant if they were not constantly amplified by the powerful right-wing media. Some opinion leaders have taken to social networks to speculate that social pressure can bring down the coalition government, paving the way for them to call new elections after the right lost the two general elections in 2019. Beyond the noise on social media and these loud yet sparse demonstrations, the polls show a certain degree of wear and tear on the coalition government, but not a victory for the right. Meanwhile, despite initially stepping up the pace with social protection measures, the government has in recent weeks reoriented its strategy to achieving wider consensus of a moderate nature. Thus, through the Reconstruction Committee recently created by the Spanish Parliament, the aim is to achieve widespread acceptance throughout the Meeting of the Committee for the Social and Economic Reconstruction of Spain country for the response to the (Photograph: Spanish Congress) impending economic and social crisis. The government, and especially Unidas Podemos, has indicated some of the strands of this consensus: constitutional shielding of the public health system specifically, much of which has been dismantled by privatization and cuts in recent years, and of public services in general; a more progressive tax system; redesigning the production model by reindustrializing the state to reverse the trend of offshoring in recent decades; acknowledging the importance of Europe as part of the solution by strengthening a broad European consensus based on these same strands to counter alternatives that aim to promote an exclusionary nationalism. It is important to note that we cannot talk about Spain without mentioning the territorial issue. According to some surveys, the handling of the crisis is causing support for the national government to wane after it opted for a centralized solution with all power in the hands of the government and the Ministry of Health in particular, while the autonomous communities, especially those led by peripheral nationalist or pro-independence parties, have demanded greater powers to manage the pandemic.