Back to the pincer movement

The United Left (IU) coalition party in Extremadura has opted for a visceral response - in obedience to the urges felt by a majority of grassroots members - and not a political one - as demanded by the program line of the national organization - to the problems of reaching an understanding with the Socialist Party (PSOE) to produce a voting majority in the regional parliament. Its decision to abstain in the session of investiture of the new regional government gives the rightist Popular Party (PP) the premiership of the only regional government that might have remained in the hands of the PSOE after the recent elections.

Finding itself unsure of what course to take, the IU Extremadura leadership committed the first mistake and chose a middle path - that of debating among its rank and file what ought to be done. It was not easy to resolve the dilemma before them: support the PSOE, or further enlarge the already vast municipal political power attained by the PP in the May 22 ballots. The presence of IU's national coordinator, Cayo Lara, on the scene and his insistence that the dilemma was not a real one, and that the balance should finally tip in favor of support for the PSOE, shows how important it was for IU that its members do the right thing. Lara's failure places him in a difficult situation. He has been disowned by the party members. Besides, the federal structure of IU has been split, because a question that affects all of the federated chapters has finally been decided by only one of them.

It will be very hard to convince IU and its voters throughout Spain that this response represents the party's political line. Many will interpret that allowing the PP to take over the government of Extremadura as a repetition of the pincer movement first essayed by the then IU leader Julio Anguita in the 1993-96 period, his unrealistic and indeed petulant pretension being to make IU the landmark party of the left, displacing the PSOE. The pincer mounted Extremadura's United Left is more earthy in nature, apparently motivated by the desire to punish that region's Socialists for their arrogance and snubs during a 28-year stint of uninterrupted government.

This reaction has nothing to do with politics. Cayo Lara has unsuccessfully attempted to explain this, while the IU spokesman in Congress, Gaspar Llamazares, considers it a very grave error. To allow the PP to govern in Extremadura not only contradicts the promises made by IU in its electoral campaign; it also belies the statement made by the party's coordinator in that region, Pedro Escobar, that IU would never make deals with parties or policies of the right.

The abstention will facilitate both of these things: government by a party of the right, and implementation of policies of the right, in the original version of the PP and not the PSOE's crisis-era copied version, as IU puts it. Sunday's announcement can be interpreted as a dangerous withdrawal of IU into itself. Many of its members and voters are going to wonder if this party's existence has any real meaning anymore.