Dissenting voices have long been proliferating from the left denouncing the radical drift of the PSOE under the hyper-leadership of Pedro Sanchez.
Prominent socialists, today relegated to the “outskirts” of the party (in expression of Oscar Puente) as Felipe González, Alfonso Guerra, Tomas Gomez or the longed for Javier Lambánand others in active form such as the loose verse Emiliano García-Pagehave not stopped publicly reproaching the president for decisions such as the amnesty, the singular financing or the governmental paralysis to which his blind obstinacy to perpetuate himself in power has led.
The news is that, in recent weeks, attempts to organize this sector critical of Sánchez in a more institutional wayaround which notable figures such as Nicolás Redondo Terrerosthe former president of the Senate Juan José Laborda or the contributor to this newspaper Virgilio Zapatero.
On October 17, the group of experts from the think tank The Plaza del Círculo, whose hard core brings together anti-sanchista socialists like the former minister Jordi Sevilla or the former leader of the Madrid PSOE Juan Lobato.
Among their proposals for democratic regeneration, they include comprehensive measures: the limitation of the extension of the Budgets, the meritocratic election of senior officials, open lists in political parties, a reform of the CIS to guarantee its autonomy from the Presidency of the Government, or a Statute of the Politician that includes an ethical code for public representatives.
In the interview with Jordi Sevilla that EL ESPAÑOL publishes today, the former president of Red Eléctrica has acknowledged that he is trying to “unite all these people who have been left out, but who continue to feel that the Socialist Party is our party.”
The formula that Seville would be studying is that of organize “within” one’s own party, “taking advantage of the fact that the statutes allow the existence of perfectly democratic currents.”
That is, articulate the critical sector formally as a platform, and obtain endorsements from the militancy and, eventually, authorization from the Federal Executive Commission to constitute itself as an internal current within the PSOE.
And this to try to reverse the situation that has been reached by “having allowed a general secretary, although democratically elected, to become a Caesar of the party”, having given “excessive prominence to the leader that has meant that no one dares to oppose him.”
It is eloquent that Seville’s diagnosis coincides with that made by the History and Language academic Carmen Iglesiasin the keynote conference with which he inaugurated last Tuesday the cycle Freedom in the 21st centuryorganized by EL ESPAÑOL and the Camilo José Cela University.
In a pertinent and often forgotten lesson in which it is difficult not to read an allusion to Pedro Sánchez, Iglesias recalled that the experience of the 20th century shows that the threat to freedom “can sometimes also present itself under the guise of democratic legitimacy.”
Because democratically elected rulers can also “get around institutional controls and act as if that mandate legitimized any interference in private life” and “perpetuation in power.”
In a context in which democracy threatens to destroy itself, we can only celebrate initiatives like the one Jordi Sevilla is beginning to explore. Because the inherent absolutist inertia of power can only be tempered if effective internal limits are set for it.
And within the framework of a party democracy, these balancing mechanisms must begin from within the organizations themselves.
Therefore, it would be excellent news if, with a new generation of moderate socialists, an internal current capable of breathe an element of pluralism into an authoritarian PSOE that punishes all dissent.
A current that, at least, can pressure the board to return a “powerful” PSOE to its social democratic and majority party identity. And that it can replace its current strategy of support for nationalism and populism with the recovery of the pactist culture that allowed it to understand itself with the PP.