United We Can hope to avoid new defections despite internal tension

The escape of Meri Pita, the Canarian deputy from United We Can (UP) who has joined the Mixed Group, has further shaken the convulsive ranks of the leftist coalition.

Nobody expects that there will be new desertions in the parliamentary group, but the tension is already emerging in different directions.

On the one hand, between the sector related to the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, and the hard core of Podemos.

And on the other, within the party that Ione Belarra commands, to which Pita belonged and 14 other public officials in the Canary Islands who have also reported her dismissal.

The escape garnered this Friday support in the parliamentary group to which it has ceased to belong.

It was only one, but it did not come from any deputy, but from the main institutional position of the coalition in Congress, the third vice president, Gloria Elizo.

Elizo came out in defense of Pita after the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, accused the escapee of committing an act of "transfuguismo, which is a fraud against citizens."

In an interview on TVE, Montero again demanded that Pita return her seat.

The third vice president of Congress was quick to reply on Twitter: “Going to the Mixed Group is not a turncoat.

That is what the political pacts say.

What is a claudication is to move away from the ethical commitments that Podemos thought of as an organization where there was room for dissent and debate.

And she concluded like this: “Open your eyes and don't look at the finger”.

Elizo has been completely distanced from the Podemos leadership for some time, to which he has not spared public criticism.

In November she, precisely together with Pita, signed an article against the group's decision to support the appointment to the Constitutional Court of Enrique Arnaldo, a jurist with close ties to the PP.

But she, for the time being, has not given signs that she is also going to break with the group, a decision that in her case would be more problematic due to the position that she occupies in the Congressional Bureau.

Pita's loss, together with the still unfilled seat of expelled Alberto Rodríguez, leaves UP —and the Government— with two fewer deputies in the Chamber, 33 in the case of the confederal group and 153 added to the socialists.

The bizarre vote on the labor reform has already shown that a single vote can be crucial for the Executive.

That episode raised voices within the UP to request that the vacancy of Rodríguez, also from the Canary Islands, be filled, but the regional organization continues to resist doing so until the judicial appeals of the expelled parliamentarian are resolved.

Beyond the effects on the precarious majority in the government, the main concern expressed by the UP leaders is how to prevent internal convulsions from weakening their position within the Executive.