The PSOE is lost, it has no pulse, it lacks the ability to react, it lives in a state of lethargy. The last sign of life for him was given by the militancy, stirring in the summer of 2017 to reinstall Pedro Sánchez in the general secretariat for the second time. It was a final death rattle because the leader reborn from the ashes returned with the firm will never again to be burned by the flames of a party inhabited by organs of power in competition with his own.
Scorched earth was the tacit slogan of the 39th Socialist Congress in which the process of emptying the vital organs of the party was undertaken, those that until then had acted as a counterweight to curb the temptations of omnipotent power of the general secretary.
The new rules of the PSOE de Sánchez, approved by reforming the statutes in February 2018, laminated the Federal Committee, until then the true highest body between Congresses, taking away its historical functions -including being able to expel the general secretary through a motion of direct censure- and they centralized all the competences in the leader and in the Executive integrated by his affines.
The Committee is today a submissive forum without relevance and the Executive, a mere speaker without the right to reply, not even a pale shadow of that body whose meetings came to be described by José Bono as an example of “hard porn”.
It was promised that the last word in the key decisions of the formation would have the militancy, but over time the commitment has been diluted to the point of disappearing. The barons, until then an alternative nucleus of internal power, were cornered and with them, the strength of the territories diminished to be monopolized by Sánchez and his circle of relatives.
“The PSOE we knew will not return.” With this phrase Elena Valenciano, right-hand man of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba and former deputy general secretary of the party, settled long ago the hopes of seeing the rebirth of the vital, rebellious and rebellious organization that was activated as an electoral supermachinery throughout the national geography; the party that constantly argued with itself, that combined socialism and liberalism, that did not give up occupying the political center and that always fled from unnatural pacts.
The formation that knew how to breathe under the fist of a deputy secretary general like Alfonso Guerra; an addict to polls and maneuvers like Pepe Blanco or an extremist of dialogue and pact like Elena Valenciano, was suffocated by the mandate of Adriana Lastra, Sánchez’s right hand and irreducible vestal of his essence.
The party, the few remaining critical voices lament under anonymity, “is a wasteland.” The elections in Andalusia have shown that “the encephalogram is almost flat with no signs of reaction.” Lastra and his struggle to exercise power over the formation against the secretary of Organization, Santos Cerdán, and over the parliamentary group against the spokesman in Congress, Héctor Gómez, are attributed a large part of the disaster, but all those consulted agree that the root of evil is deeper and comes from further away, from that summer of 2017.
This Monday, the barons claimed to have learned of the resignation of the deputy secretary through the press. “No one had anticipated anything for us,” they say, doubting that pregnancy is the ultimate reason for their departure. The Andalusian butt has opened the spigot of fear, even for Sánchez who sees how the dose of anesthesia that he imposed on the PSOE has been excessive. By dint of applauding him, the party has forgotten the healthy exercise of self-criticism, has lost connection with the citizenry and has not even known how to maintain its historic electoral granary.
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