In Spain, Politics via Reddit

Hard to imagine a better place for leftist populism than Reddit. The fact that it&#x27;s not popular in Spain is a feature here, allowed them to target the most engaged first. With the language barrier, probably also younger and better educated.<p><i>It’s still early to predict what is in store for Podemos.</i><p>I&#x27;ll take a shot: it&#x27;ll fizzle out, just like Occupy, just like dozens of parties across Europe who manage a decent showing in the European elections and then don&#x27;t pass the threshold or only do it as a random plankton coalition. That, and direct, all-inclusive democracy generally doesn&#x27;t work. But they&#x27;re ditching that from the looks of it so who knows.

Podemos is undoubtedly an Internet phenomena. A modern and open party that not just uses Reddit for coordination and keeping in touch with its voters, but also makes use of tools like Agora Voting[0] for Liquid Democracy&#x2F;online referendums, and mobile apps for transparent group decisions.<p>They say about themselves that &quot;they&#x27;re not really a Party but a tool for disrupting politics&quot; and I think this is quite accurate... they&#x27;ve gone from 0 to front-runner in 5 months.<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/agoravoting/agora-ciudadana" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;agoravoting&#x2F;agora-ciudadana</a>

I would like to rant a bit if you don&#x27;t mind.<p>There is no political Left in Europe. Podemos is not a leftist party, since no leftist party or democratic conservative party would ever get paid by the State and be part of it (like the Nazi party). It&#x27;s a contradiction in terms and something that simply cannot be.<p>Most of the people don&#x27;t know the distinction between formal democracy and real(social) democracy and this causes great confusion.<p>Formal democracy is not about the content of laws (eg: laws to protect Human Rights), but about the rules that define the democratic game, rules that ensure that the People is in charge at all times (constitutional liberty). Real democracy is about the content and this explains why it is prone to have an ideological battle.<p>The most important requirements are:<p>1.- Representativeness: not possible in Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Portugal among others, since they use the proportional list system.<p>2.- Separation of powers: not happening in Spain. The most voted political party in the legislative elections forms government.<p>3.- Imperative mandate: Sieyes abolished it during the French Revolution and it still to be restored in all Europe. The elected candidates in the legislative elections should remain loyal to their promises.<p>4.- Different elections: for executive and legislative (like in France)<p>Podemos doesn&#x27;t care about any of these things as far as I concern.<p>In my modest view there is no possible reform, the problem is not the people in charge (Podemos guys seem honest), but the actual political system that doesn&#x27;t fulfill any of the requirements. We haven&#x27;t conquered our Liberty yet.

Podemos is just a symptom to the problem of corruption in the two main parties, they even menace to make a coalition if they can lose control over the power centers, and with the crisis and unemployment is the way of escape of many of the frustrations of the people. I don&#x27;t know if they&#x27;ll survive or will be assimilated(probably) but if they shake the dirty and corrupted politics of Spain is welcome.