UPyD-PP: a comparison

One of my readers has challenged me to give further evidence of Diez being a puppet for PP. Firstly, I'd like to thank him for his comment that always enriches debate and secondly I will gladly accept his challenge.

Here are some comparisons in statements between Diez and the PP leadership:

'It's an obscenity the use of numbers to count the dead'- Rosa Diez (UPyD) on May 5, 2008.
'It's very miserable of him to compare numbers of deaths'- Mariano Rajoy (PP) on May 5, 2008.

'It means Zapatero is against the Pact for liberty and against terrorism'- Rosa Diez (UPyD) on May 5, 2008.
'With the arrival of PSOE to power the Pact for liberty and against terroism is broken'- Mariano Rajoy (PP) on June 2, 2006.

'When I say Spain breaks I mean a fracture of constitutional Spain'- Rosa Diez (UPyD) on September 24, 2007.
'The secessionist menace, the breaking of the State, the fragmentation of the national sentiment. In other words, a great national crisis'- Jose Maria Aznar (PP) on October 4, 2007

'Those that don't put it up [the Spanish national flag] attack the citizenry'- Rosa Diez (UPyD) on September 30, 2007.
'It's the flag that unites us all and it has to be put up in all the town halls of Spain'- Mariano Rajoy (PP) on September 8, 2007.

'PSOE has stopped being a centralist party and started defending the nationalists' interests'- Rosa Diez (UPyD) on September 30, 2008.
'PP defends better the interests of Spain and of all its citizens'- Mariano Rajoy (PP) on February 22, 2008.

'To act against terrorism without political concessions'- Rosa Diez (UPyD) on September 30, 2007.
'To support the Government in the anti-terrorist fight but without political concessions'- Mariano Rajoy (PP) on May 27, 2006.

The fact is that Diez uses the same catastrophist language as Rajoy and Aznar and focuses her entire campaign on supporting PP's key attack lines. Furthermore, for all those that don't know who Rita Barbera is just simply say she's not your moderate conservative of the likes of Gallardon and Villalobos but rather part of the hardline within PP, more Aguirre style.

A vote for UPyD is a vote for PP

After Rosa Diez graciously hanged around with Rita Barbera, the infamous PP Mayor of Valencia, during the regional festivities, do we need any more prove that Diez and her new party are nothing more than a puppet for PP?

Let images speak for themselves. Barbera known for her staunch partisanship would never have invited anyone from PSOE to attend her populist rallies around Valencia capital. Diez has shown her true colours now and nothing she says can change her image or that of UPyD.

I'd like to know what Fernando Savater has to say about this picture though, as he always claims their new party is leftwing to the core, don't think Barbera would be his favourite companion...

Those annoying third party candidates

This past Sunday, Ralph Nader, the left-of-the-Democrats independent candidate announced in Tim Russert's Meet the Press that he's running again for the US Presidency. Then he went on to attack Democratic candidates Obama and Clinton for their 'spineless' candidacies and the need for someone with substance in the left to lead the country. His annoucement has shocked the DNC that fears another 2000 campaign when Nader took away support from Al Gore in the key state of Florida. On the other hand, Republicans are delighted with his announcement and attacks on the Democrats.

Nader's isn't an isolated case. In plenty of elections disgruntled 'I know better' egocentric so-called progressive candidates enter the fray harming the electoral possibilities of mainstream left wing parties. It springs to mind the case of Rosa Diez in Spain. A Socialist Euro MP for many years, she contested the leadership of the party twice (1997 and 2001) and twice lost. So realising that she couldn't be a senior figure within PSOE, she started her own party. UPyD was launched this past summer in Spain and is participating in the March 9 general election. Diez claims her new party is PSOE without Zapatero's support for peripheral nationalisms in Spain (i.e.: Catalan and Basque mainly). However, her entire campaign so far (and we are two weeks ago from polling day) has been focused on attacking Zapatero and the Socialists and playing into PP's electoral strategy. And she's getting around 4-5% of the vote which could give her party one seat in Congress and take it away from PSOE in an very tight race.

Nader, like Diez, should know better. If they really cared about the electorate they would step aside on these elections where they know real decissions are at stake. Especially when they don't present any new policy and just focus on slagging off those progressive parties that can actually win. Such is the case of the 2008 Spanish and American elections and their bids are nothing but big circus of egocentrism and nothing to do with the good of their countries.

Famous third party candidacies (not necessarily all bad ones though):

- Ken Livingstone (London mayoral election 2000). Ken Livingstone presented himself as an independent candidate opposing the official Labour candidate Frank Dobson. Livingstone won the race with Dobson coming third behind Tory Steve Norris.

- George Galloway (UK General election 2005). Left the Labour Party in opposition to the war in Iraq and created his own party, RESPECT. He won the seat for Bethnal Green and Bow defeating incumbent Oona King from Labour.

- Ciutadans (Catalan regional elections 2006). Claiming to represent the interests of Spanish-identified Catalan voters, Ciutadans within months of its foundation won three seats in the Catalan Assembly.

- Ralph Nader (US general election 2000 and 2004). Nader, running as a Green candidate in 2000, claim there was no difference between Al Gore and Bush Jr's bids. His popularity then took away key votes from Gore in the state of Florida that eventually made Bush president.

- Joe Lieberman (US Mid-term elections 2007). Having been de-selected by his own party (and the liberal blogosphere) for his support for the war in Iraq, Lieberman ran as an independent beating Ned Lamont, the official Democratic candidate, to retain his seat in the Senate.

Liberal wannabes crumble.

Rosa Diez's new party, UPD, the new liberal wannabe party in Spain is crumbling even before it started campaigning. Rosa Diez, the eternal second in line candidate to the PSOE leadership, decided to leave PSOE in September to become leader of her own right of the left (whatever that means) party. She, together with Fernando Savater, thought they could build a new party which could claim the political centre of Spanish politics. The sad thing is that Diez, and certainly Savater, don't have much of an ideological drive. Their only common believe, as they are both Basque, is that PSOE has given too much away to nationalist parties from Catalonia and the Basque Country. Their new party is based on the idea of a Socialist party without the so-called centrifugal forces within PSOE represented by the present President of Spain. Their error has been to label themselves as economic liberals, when they aren't as they are more of the protectionist Socialist kind, and political liberals, which is PSOE policy minus the previously mentioned centrifugal policy. Such liberal label has no base in Spain where, as argued in my earlier entry about Spanish electoral behaviour, the centre is a marginal political position among the electorate. The need to create a new image has forced them to create a new party that: a) hasn't got a militant or electoral base b) hasn't got a clear differentiated ideology c) isn't any different from many currents within PSOE itself.

I believe that Diez is gone into some kind of massive egotrip. She knew she never had enough support within PSOE to win the leadership of the party and has decided to play into the hands of PP on the Spanish nationalism card. It hasn't really worked out, today her entire party executive committee in Catalonia resigned over an internal infight over who was going to be the candidate for Congress for Barcelona! How can it be that a party that is three months old, that has never contested a national general election is already fighting over a leadership contest as if they were a natural party of government? It seems to me that her egocentrism is the only value Diez has transmited to the very few activists that have joined her party in the last three months. Good luck to her and her sect, they'll need it to even be in the ballot on the 9th of March.