Jordi Sevilla activates Sánchez’s succession with a manifesto against his “betrayal” of the PSOE, which he transformed into a “fan club”

First movement within the PSOE to succeed Pedro Sánchez after the debacle in Extremadura. The one who was minister of José Luis Zapatero, Jordi Seville, will launch in January a manifest prepare a social democratic alternative to the PSOE to the “podemization” of Sánchez, whom he accuses of having transformed the party into a “fan club” impose a Caesarist base in which there are no counterbalances or critical voices.

For Sevilla, one of Sánchez’s biggest mistakes is his “betrayal” of PSOE values and, therefore, he will put on the table a “initial document of declaration of principles”, where he explicitly wants it to appear that “the objective of all this is to recover the PSOE for a social democratic policy” because he believes that for several years they have been pursuing a more “populist” policy than a social democratic one.

“I try to ensure that around this manifesto there is a sufficient number of experienced and appreciated voices within the PSOE“, but also “with the voices of young people who still want to fight for their political future and for the political future of Spain”, explained the former minister. To do this, he speaks with “many people” and notes that there is a “receptivity”, as he revealed Tuesday in an interview with European press.

Channel dissatisfaction

The objective is therefore channel discontent within the PSOE and that this and his manifesto become a future basis for the construction of an alternative to win the next party primaries, to which, as expected, Sánchez will appear.

Even if Seville recognizes that “These things take time” He makes it clear that his intention is to regain the enthusiasm of his colleagues with a “positive” alternative that “starts a snowball” and that grows “over time” and is reflected in a project that lasts “at least until the Congress” of the party.

He believes that there are still “too many unknowns” to make “clear” decisions now. This is why he wants to monitor them and take them “at least every two weeks or monthly, depending on how the situation evolves”.

In fact, he is convinced that the results of electoral appeals, the defeat in Extremadura and the following regional elections -Aragon, Castile and León and Andalusia- They will “move the ground”perceptions and urgencies will change.”

“If it doesn’t work in summer, goodbye”

To this, he adds, it remains to be seen how the change of María Jesús Montero to the First Vice-Presidency will be managed and the result of this among the Andalusians. According to him, a defeat of the first vice-president would not be the same as that of a little-known candidate like that of Extremadura.

However, Jordi Sevilla says he is “very pragmatic”. “If we settle in this summer and it doesn’t move forward,” he’ll say “goodbye, fine.” I would behe said, “another failed attempt to do something and have a holy Easter.” “I don’t make a living from that and I won’t make a living from that,” he stressed.

In any case, the former minister made it clear from the start that he did not intend for this to become a confrontation between young and old as happened in Suresnes.

“The young people of Suresnes have eliminated the old people of Suresnes in the political sense. I would not like the old people of today to want to come back. No, no, this dynamic does not seem correct to me,” he warned because Its objective is that young people are the ones who “pull the car”.

Thus, he explained that this approach to creating a “social democratic alternative” within the PSOE is due to the fact that this formation was podemized since Pedro Sánchez gave the “hug” with Pablo Iglesiasthey agreed on a coalition government and stopped implementing social democratic policies.

In addition, it guarantees that “this is not the Sánchez” he worked with and criticizes the fact that he gave in to the approval of the “amnesty” – “Sanchez did it alone overnight” – whileeither he had rejected it, or the pacts with Bildu, a group with which he said he had “nothing to do”.

“Fan club” and Caesarism

He is also opposed to his party now opting for a Pedro Sánchez “fan club” structureto whom he warns that these “stop being the fan club the next day” as happened to Felipe González and Zapatero, according to his memory.

In this sense, he criticizes there is no counterweight neither in the Federal Committee, nor in the Executive nor in the federations because Pedro Sánchez placed ministers to “control” them.

“It’s a situation, some call it Caesarism, that we had never seen in a social democratic party”, he noted, while making a certain self-criticism by recalling that those who, like him, defended the primaries never occurred to them the possibility of having a general secretary “without any counterweight”.

“But what are you doing?”

Faced with this situation, Jordi Sevilla first launched the idea of ​​creating an internal current within the PSOE – the socialist left is the only one that exists – but he admits that “the conditions for creating this internal current are not made to make it easy, quite the contrary”.

After talking with many colleagues, he realized that a good part of the target audience he wants to address with this “project to recover the PSOE for social democracy” had either abandoned the party, been expelled, or consisted of voters and supporters who had never been active.

It is for this reason that he chose to broaden the objective and transform it into a movement of activists and sympathizerswith the idea of ​​not going “against anyone” but rather of adopting an approach “in favor of the recovery of social democracy for the PSOE, and therefore the recovery of an exciting project”. A project, he added, which aspires to “become widespread in the country”.

“If what I have in mind works, we will discuss and propose proposals and alternatives to the main problems of the country, such as child poverty”he said before showing his indignation that Spain is one of the EU countries with the highest rate.

“I look at my government, I say, but what are you doing? What are you doing?? And then they are in the things of Puigdemont, in the things of Podemos, in the things of others, except in the things of social democracy,” he exclaimed.

Indeed, he assures that “this government has given the most income to capital income, to the richest”thus using the same expression as Sánchez when he said that the people “praise” this government.

According to Jordi Sevilla, wage income only increased in third place, also affected in part by the increase in taxes due to the non-deflation of the personal income tax rate.

He recalls that the Ibex 35 is doing better than ever in Spain and he is convinced that a social democratic government would rejoice because with this money “it distributes and puts an end to child poverty”. However, he regrets that this will not happen.