• Power void in regions after clash over Pablo Iglesias’ central leadership •
The national Coordinating Council of new-left, anti-austerity party Podemos has announced fresh primary elections in four of Spain’s 17 regions, beginning with La Rioja and the Basque Country, in a move to resolve internal party struggles over centralized control and dispersion of power at the regional level.
The Council announced Monday at the same time that it will appoint a special counsellor to oversee upcoming primaries in two other regions, Galicia and Cantabria, where the regional party leadership were dissolved in recent months, following the public airing of policy differences with the Podemos national leadership team of Pablo Iglesias.
Analysts say Podemos’ ongoing struggles over central versus regional leadership control have been partly responsible for the party’s inability to cement its presence in all regions and are rooted in the unresolved contradiction between Podemos’ increasingly centralised party structures and the assembly-based, grassroots structure that marked Podemos’ inception and emergence from Spain’s Indignados anti-austerity movement of 2011.
► Read the Full Story in Spanish at La Vanguardia and El País …
► UPDATE: PODEMOS GALICIA LEADER CHALLENGES IGLESIAS ► El Mundo …
