• IU leader cites Unidos Podemos inability to gain credibility among electorate
• Garzon faults Podemos for internal disputes, focus on parliamentary politics
Alberto Garzón, leader of the leftwing Izquierda Unida (IU, United Left) coalition and co-founder of the Unidos Podemos (United We Can) alliance last year between IU and anti-austerity party Podemos (We Can), has said in a candid report to be presented to his own party this Saturday that clearly “something is wrong” within his party’s alliance with Podemos.
Cemented during national elections last year, the Unidos Podemos alliance was designed by Garzón and Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias to present a leftwing united front that could overtake the Socialist party (PSOE) at the ballot box and present a real threat to the conservative governing Partido Popular (PP) of Spanish President Mariano Rajoy.
As covered in several Spanish news outlets, Garzón’s pending report to the IU leadership reportedly laments that even though the rival Socialists were left leaderless for several months following the ouster in an internal party coup of PSOE secretary general Pedro Sanchez last October, Unidos Podemos has been “unable to gain ground among the leftwing electorate” and has not clearly established itself as a viable alternative on the political left and capable of turning the Rajoy government out of power.
Garzón also reportedly criticizes IU’s partner Podemos in the report, which he says has spent too much effort trying to build itself into a “classic” political party in Congress, which he says is partly responsible for Unidos Podemos not having been able to build a public presence beyond its involvement in parliamentary politics. While Garzón attributes part of the problem to disputes among factions inside Podemos, he also says it is due to a lack of credibility among the electorate since the 2015 national elections and the inability of IU to gain greater visibility within the alliance.
► Read More in Spanish at El País and infoLibre …
