Tuesday, 9 March 2021

PSOE/PSC is a right-wing party

After Catalan elections, a number of in theory progressive people keep insisting that JxCat is extreme right and PSOE/PSC is left-wing.

Among them, there's the En ComĂș Podem people and Podemos in general. And it's baffling that they're taking this attitude. I mean, they're currently ruling with PSOE, yes, so some protection is understandable. However, claiming JxCat is worse than PSOE/PSC in right-wing matters is simply not true. 

Let's just look at facts here, shall we? I'll just list their latest actions:

-PSOE has a big number of people in executive positions in the most powerful Spanish companies, and has legislated in their favour several times.

-PSOE reformed the constitution (together with PP) just once recently in order to include the clause that the country's public debt  must be paid first, before any other expense, in 2011

-PSOE increased the age of retirement to 67 years. 

-PSOE applied a labour reform that made firing cheaper, made it easier to fire people if a company is having loses, and allowed companies to bypass worker agreements if they managed to negotiate this with employees (while not having an even ground since the company has a lot more power). This resulted in a big decrease of job quality in Spain, plus created the perfect conditions to fire people that had better contracts.  

-PSOE defended not investigating the previous king of Spain and helped him exit the country as if that solved the corruption issues. They're also a big defenders of Monarchy as a good thing to have.

-PSOE is refusing to regulate the price of rent to try to stop it from raising indefinitely. 

-PSOE tried to rule with Ciudadanos (right-wing) before negotiating with Podemos (centre-left).

-PSOE made a pact with CIU in Catalunya to make corrupt healthcare organizations that control and privatized a big section of the healthcare market in here. The people in CIU that were part of this are currently in PDECAT and not in JxCat.

-PSOE has made pacts with PP to split important positions inside the tribunals and has been using the judicial system as a repressive arm of the state exactly the same way as PP. 

-PSOE has not removed recent laws promoted by PP that constraint freedom of expression and is using them to jail critics and repress different sections of the population.

-PSOE members are part of several economic circles that do not follow any democratic laws, are there with PP members and support more power and money for the economic elites. 

-PSOE privatized several public companies that were having benefits with the only objective to transfer this benefit to private owners. 

I will add that during the 15M protests that directly resulted in the creation of Podemos, a common slogan was "PPSOE" and "PP and PSOE is the same shit". This served to indicate that both parties were complicit in keeping the status quo where a few companies and rich people keep the power and society doesn't improve their well-being. PSOE may implement some social measures like defending abortion, promoting more equality for women, hinting at allowing euthanasia, or trying to protect LGBTQ+ rights, that is true, but that's about it. These two parties were correctly identified as the problem that is preventing Spain from improving the life of all their citizens, and Podemos until recently understood they had to defeat both to change things(Just a clarification here: PP is the same as Ciudadanos which is the same as VOX. All these are the same, so defeating PP in the past now means defeating these three parties so they never have power again). That is, until they lost support and realized they could not rule alone, and then they decided to try to associate themselves with PSOE. They forgot about one of the core principles of the protests, and now they're unable to create much change because of it, and are losing voters left and right because of it.

I would not vote for JxCat (too centre for my taste), but they've separated with their worst elements, now found in PDECAT, and they've voted for the following laws, to say a few:

-Tax big bank deposits

-Force energy companies to provide service to poor people. 

-Tax empty houses

-Forbid fracking

-Regulate apartment prices

-Forbid kicking out people from their houses

-Promote protections towards climate change and use renewable energies and good practices

Of course Spanish government and tribunals have annulled all of these because they considered them anti-constitutional or that Catalunya has no right in regulating these things or they created worse laws soon enough (like a national 0% tax on bank deposits) that made these invalid, so we couldn't experience this effect, but they're certainly a lot more to the left than what PSOE has been showing for a long long time now.

Any party that says JxCat is more right than PSOE/PSC is straight-up lying and not acting thinking about real left-wing policies, and this really undermines any respect and good reputation they might have before this.

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