The creation of "Lanzarote en pie", which was presented in society claiming to be a "citizen" platform that intended to promote "an insular progressive and transformative front", has ended up being the cause of the definitive rupture of what remained of the confluence table of left-wing parties on the island. This was revealed this Wednesday by the coordinator of Izquierda Unida in Lanzarote, Pepe Carballo, who claims that Podemos was the one who really "set up" that group.
According to Carballo, after the departure of Alternativa Ciudadana and Somos Lanzarote from that confluence table, IU continued to bet on reaching an agreement with the purple party. "We have been systematically asking to work again at the table, but Podemos has been giving the runaround to these requests, so it seems that they were more interested in promoting this platform that was set up by Lanzarote en Pie", said the island coordinator of Izquierda Unida, who claims that "the vast majority of the people" who attended the meetings of that platform "were almost all people from Podemos".
Among other people, the candidates of the purple party to the Cabildo, Nona Perera, and to the Arrecife City Council, Leticia Padilla, have been seen in these meetings, who together with María del Río are the ones who have taken the reins of the party, after the announcement of resignations by the one who has been the island leadership of Podemos headed by Carlos Meca. Since then, although Perera presented herself to the primaries to the Cabildo defending that she was the candidate who would make possible the confluence of left-wing parties, the departures have been happening not only in Podemos, but also in that confluence table. It was then that "Lanzarote en pie" was publicly presented and when they started talking about incorporating "civil society", but this has also ended up causing the rupture with Izquierda Unida.
"They wanted to bring new actors into the play"
"The approaches were quite incomprehensible from every point of view", explains Carballo, who recalls that "in the first meeting for the confluence table it was agreed in a clear and concise manner that this table was the one that had the executive capacity to make decisions". However, he questions that "that has then been changing" and that they wanted to "bring new actors into the play, with the same capacity, and I would say in a rather strange way, in the sense of bringing those actors in and giving them the protagonism of making executive decisions when we had already closed that issue".
In this regard, the IU coordinator clarifies that he shares the need for civil society to participate in the project and contribute its opinion, but believes that what was intended to be done through that platform is to annul the confluence table in which they had been working for months, after the sector that continues in Podemos and Izquierda Unida were left alone.
Among other things, Carballo states that in one of those meetings of Lanzarote en pie he stated that it made no sense to "start from scratch" with the program, because "there was already advanced work". "I understood that the most reasonable thing to do was to pass the work we had advanced to the people so that they could read and contribute. And the people who attended there, independent and even people from Podemos, assumed that proposal, but then it does not materialize, because who has the email addresses is not IU, but who has set up this platform of Lanzarote en Pie, which is no one else but Podemos. So, we keep adding little things and none of them positive", he added.
Contacts with dissatisfied members of Somos and Podemos
Regarding what Izquierda Unida will do now, Carballo has explained that they are studying forming an electoral coalition or even running under other acronyms. "We can join any proposal that we see as reasonable", he stated, although ruling out joining alliances such as the one that Somos Lanzarote and Nueva Canarias have already sealed. "If now they want to sell me that Román Rodríguez and Nueva Canarias are left-wing, I'm going to a convent and becoming a nun, I have no problem", he joked.
However, he does consider incorporating people who he claims have left Somos Lanzarote after that agreement with NC, with whom he assures that they are already talking although he has not given names. And he has also referred to people from Podemos "who are not at all in agreement with the positions and attitudes of their leadership" and who he assures are also "calling" him. Although in this case he has not specified names either, he has clarified that he is not referring to people who hold public office and who have already announced their departure, but to others who he claims are dissatisfied with how the formation has turned out.
"In Podemos there are three families in Lanzarote and we have dealt with different people. And I can also assure you that with the people we have dealt with from Podemos, none of them has had a public responsibility", he clarified. In addition, he has added the possibility of also adding neighborhood, student and retiree associations and even "people from the countryside" with whom they claim to have spoken to "recover the time lost" in that frustrated confluence table.
