13/05/2015
The headline has been reproduced almost literally by practically all media: ‘The PP would win the elections but it would need Citizens to rule. ‘Some–perhaps many–agonizing Popular Party voters will have breathed a sigh of relief after the release of the polls. ‘Ultimately,’ they may think, ‘the composition can change a little but the majority will be the same’. If that's what they believe, they should qualify their confidence with a sensible dose of caution.
The settled and invariable assertion that ‘the PP will need Citizens to rule’ has become one of the most dangerous misunderstandings for the Popular Party in the upcoming elections. On the one hand, it conveys the wrong idea that Citizens is a party born to consolidate the power of the PP, as if its founding purpose was to complete the majority that the PP could not obtain for itself, which is far from true. On the other hand, because such a distortion of what Citizens is settles the belief among some segments of the Popular electorate that the PP and Citizens are interchangeable votes, that they have a common origin and that they will have the same destiny in the institutions.
Citizens is a party as heavily involved in the electoral race as any other and, obviously, there is nothing reprehensible about this. But in this case, it so happens, that it challenges votes and political space from the PP. Its goal, therefore, can be no other than to end the Popular Party, a Popular Party which, ever since 1990, has managed to bring together everything to the right of the left and which has defeated the left in three of the five general elections held since 1996, two of them with absolute majorities.
A party is an ideological acquis as much as it is a project of power. A sector of the electorate that has generally been identified with the PP could feel ideologically close to Citizens, especially if that person has not bothered to get in-depth knowledge of a good part of its proposals, if that person chooses to ignore its own definition as a left-wing party, or if that person forgets that its desired partner is not the PP but UPyD. The confrontation with the Catalan secessionist nationalism, the media's exploitation of its leader's image and the sonority of its political speech–the only thing they can do because they have no experience in management–have aroused the interest of Popular Party voters, who, on the other hand, perceive a greatly reduced emotional and political cost should they choose to change their vote. It is a reasonable assumption to think that many of them actually want the PP to rule even though their vote may finally go to Citizens, and they find no contradiction between one thing and the other; indeed, they confidently believe that this will happen.
However, whatever the ideological proximity perceived with Citizens, there is a logic of power that puts this party on a collision course with the PP, now and after the elections. This does not mean that there can be no cooperation or understanding in this or that autonomous community or in this or that town hall. What it does mean is that they are different political projects and, in the case of Citizens–and even more as they are an emerging party–this difference will be reflected in power options that will not include the Popular Party but rather will often go against the Popular Party, and in any case, will have as its target the replacement of the Popular Party.
What one must certainly acknowledge to Citizens is its ability to cover with a veil of ideological firmness and of virtuous distance its aspirations to power, which turns out to be a striking tactical versatility and a remarkable pragmatism. Citizens ‘can form an alliance with the PSOE, PP and even with Podemos’ as Albert Rivera has recently stated, a claim that fits in better with a ‘traditional’ politician of Andreotti's Italian School than with the leader of a party that makes transparency and respect for the voice of citizens without the distortions of old party politics its banner. Those manoeuvres would be typical of those parties they dismiss without distinction as ‘traditional’, but not of the party that claims to have the formula of renewal. A few days ago Rivera was saying that he did not care if he won one, five or twenty seats–I don't remember if this was the exact sequence–but that what he wanted was to change the country. With the peculiar logic of a student who says he does not care if he gets a zero or a four because what he wants is to pass the subject, together with the ‘cross-sectioning’ which encourages its tactical calculations and its deliberate discursive fog, Citizens casts an insincere message of kind anti-politics that cover their aspirations to power before the eyes of many potential voters, an aspiration that is as real as it is legitimate, but which is certainly not called to agree on an unavoidable encounter with the Popular Party.
Citizens has said through its president that they can make an alliance with the PP, the PSOE ‘and even with Podemos’. It is simply about believing Albert Rivera; especially those who consider voting for his party.