Irene Montero has dismissed Amanda Meyer as her Chief of Staff at the Ministry of Equality. The dismissal is a consequence of the deterioration of relations between the two after the confrontation and tension that occurred between Podemos and Izquierda Unida during the construction of the joint candidacy in Andalusia, according to La Vanguardia.
That pulse ended up being lost by Podemos thanks to the decisive support that Yolanda Díaz gave IU so that Inma Nieto was finally the candidate for Por Andalucía to the detriment of Juan Antonio Delgado. The management of those harsh negotiations deteriorated relations between Montero, number two of Podemos, and Meyer, who is a member of the IU Executive and a leader of the PCE.
Official sources from the Ministry of Equality have confirmed the change but have framed it within “normality” and the opening of a new cycle. “This is a change of stage in terms of the cabinet leadership, after the approval of the Sexual Freedom Law in Congress, for this last year and a half of the legislature,” these sources say.
Likewise, they add that Meyer “has been fundamental and essential” within the team of the Ministry of Equality as well as in “all the legislative projects” that have been promoted in these two and a half years.
Meyer assumed the position of Montero’s chief of staff in January 2020 within a mixed team set up by Montero in which people from IU and not only from Podemos were mixed in positions of maximum trust.
Podemos and IU have been reluctant since the process of forming a joint candidacy in Andalusia turned out to be a fiasco, since the purple party was left off the lists after a technical error that blamed IU when it came to registering the brand a few minutes before the term expired.
Despite the fact that the ruling could be resolved thanks to the inclusion of the purples as independents, the friction within the coalition has not diminished since then and the echoes already reach the governmental structure of United We Can, a party that in several of its ministries intersperses responsibilities between IU and Podemos.
The internal war is also conditioned by the pulse of the parties that make up the purple conglomerate before the future project that the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, plans to lead, and about which hardly any details are known. Despite the fact that Podemos claims an essential role in Díaz’s plans, the also Minister of Labor has advocated mainstreaming her platform and transcending political brands, an idea that does not convince the party led by Ione Belarra.
In any case, from the confederal space they deny that the open gap could affect the development of the coalition’s ministerial portfolios and define Meyer’s departure as a “personal” and independent change that will not have repercussions in other departments that depend on United We Can .
The purples have articulated their responsibilities in the Government in such a way that the positions are distributed among all the parties that make up the coalition. The most prominent case, apart from Equality -the main ministry in the hands of Podemos- is Social Rights, commanded by Ione Belarra and which has Enrique Santiago, leader of the PCE, as Secretary of State.
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