The leadership of Podemos Asturies led by the new regional coordinator, Diego Ruiz de la Peña, has notified the General Board of the Principality of the definitive expulsion of the Covadonga Tomé party, which occupies the only seat that the purple party obtained in the Asturian Parliament in the regional elections last year.
In addition, Podemos has requested the Senior Lawyer and the Board of the Asturian Chamber to take the appropriate measures so that "it does not use the name of the party."
In the opinion of the party leadership, the events that led to this expulsion are extremely serious and have caused “enormous damage” and they point out that among the offenses classified as serious and very serious in their statutes are “the forced occupation of a party headquarters. party in Gijón, the carrying out of escraches to workers or the appropriation of the economic allocation of the parliamentary group that exceeds 150,000 euros.
According to the arguments of the party leadership, the deputy is accused of improper use of the organization's own funds and also affects her refusal to donate a percentage of her salary, as required by the party's ethical code, which in these moments represents a debt of at least 5,000 euros "and serious economic damage for the organization, which lacks access to the funds that correspond to it for having obtained parliamentary representation in the last regional elections."
THE regional coordinator of Podemos Asturies, Diego Ruiz de la Peña, in an image of the X account of the formation.
For Podemos, the drift of a break with Tomé was consummated in recent months with his refusal to agree on the party's position regarding the investiture, the appointment of his own negotiating team for the budgets or the hiring of personnel at his particular service without communicating it. to Podemos.
Furthermore, they point out that despite having a precautionary suspension of militancy, Tomé publicly called two citizen assemblies "without having the authority to do so and again outside the party's procedures."
In a statement, the purple formation affirms that, with the communication registered in the Board, they consider closed an issue “that is already part of the past” of Podemos, “which has begun a new stage of reorganization and strengthening of its structures” that They have in their militancy and in their municipal public positions “the best tool to continue making transformative policies.”
The deputy did not present allegations regarding the resolution of the file that proposed her expulsion and which was promoted by the State Democratic Guarantees Commission, “an impartial and independent body in charge of ensuring respect for the rights of the registered people and compliance with the fundamental principles and operating rules.
Absolute disengagement
The already deputy of the Mixed Group, Covadonga Tomé, assumes her complete disassociation with Podemos Asturias, and has asked to remove references to that political formation from posters, email or any other material related to the parliamentary work that she will carry out from now on. .
The parliamentarian, who has assured that she has not received official notification from the party since her expulsion proposal was conveyed to her on December 23, has stated that no action needs to be taken, given that she has been attached to the Mixed Group since the beginning of the legislature (the minimum number of seats to form one's own parliamentary group in Asturias is two).
In his opinion, his definitive expulsion “does not change anything” because he will continue working with the same ideas and the same programmatic proposals with the support of the same people who voted for his candidacy in the last regional elections.
Tomé has also rejected the accusations of his former party of having appropriated the financial allocation paid by the General Board of the Principality and of having refused to contribute a percentage of his salary as a deputy to the organization, generating a debt estimated at 5,000 euros.
“This is the allocation that parliamentary groups receive as parliamentary groups, not as parties, and any movement in that account, all allocations and invoices, has to be approved by the intervention service of the General Board.
So there is no room, as Podemos suggests, for opaque management of these accounts,” she says.
Tomé's team has always framed the file opened to the deputy and the expulsion in "the purge started years ago by the party leadership against the critical sector", which began with the expulsion of the former general secretary, Daniel Ripa, and which accumulates More than a dozen open files already.
After the expulsion of Tomé, Podemos becomes an extra-parliamentary party in Asturias.