Some time ago, a few months now, from this column we had published an article called “The Party without People”, an opinion that caused some discomfort, but to which time inexorably proved us right.
The People’s Party, founded by businessman Edgardo Novick, and which included former Carmelite Colorado legislator Daniel Bianchi among its ranks, gradually ran out of figures to the point that it seems to be disappearing. This is stated in a recent publication of the newspaper El País. Perhaps one of the knockout blows that the community had suffered a few months ago with inflammatory statements by Daniel Peña.
in a limbo
Consulted a couple of months ago about the situation of the People’s Party, deputy Peña -elected to represent that motto- said: “That is the most difficult question to answer. We are in a limbo, without renewal of authorities, there was an attempt to make a trout convention, which was endorsed by the Electoral Court. Today the party is without authorities, with the only representation in Parliament and the only organic operation of whoever speaks. Not in anything more than that,” said the legislator.
On whether Edgardo Novick had distanced himself from the People’s Party, he laconicly replied: “I don’t have the faintest idea.”
“I think the big problem was that the visualization that it was a game was disfigured. I think that many of us attended the call to generate an open party, not very attached to ideological visions, but to a much more open and romantic issue, and then it ended up being a fiasco. The operation (of the Party) has been through our political grouping, ”he said.
In this context, speaking of the institutional fragility of his party, he maintained that “directly, as the People’s Party, that no longer exists. What there is is the possibility that our group takes the reins and gives another face to the matter or that something new arises ”.
Collapse
The People’s Party, the same one that formed the multicolored coalition, the one that led to five signatories of the “Commitment for the country”, is at a breaking point as it has been known until now.
The figure of Edgardo Novick, with his promoted rise from box loader in the market to form a conglomerate of successful companies, was the unifying element of the first call that had him as the protagonist: the campaign for the Municipality of Montevideo in 2016, where He came to surpass in number of votes none other than Lucía Topolansky, with the figure of José Mujica behind. Those were the days of the Concertación Party, which had created the founding parties to compete with the Broad Front in the capital.
Novick, although he lost, was enthusiastic about that adventure. And he took off at the national level, formed a structure, a party, and was its candidate for president in the last elections, obtaining more than 26,000 votes, with a seat in the chamber. Although he was a signatory of the basic document of the government coalition, Novick did not accept positions in the administration and gradually disappeared from the public scene as well as from the functioning of the party.
What should be the normal operation of a political party that fulfills its obligations has become an abandoned field where it is not known who is in charge or even where the power is. It is a conglomerate that falls apart like a castle of sand. The convention does not meet. Novick does not meet with Daniel Peña, the party’s only deputy, who acts independently within the coalition. Peña’s conventionalists, who are the majority, pointed out in a statement the “abandonment” and “negligence” of the People’s Party. He transcended that he would be in the prelude to the call for a convention to be able to renew the authorities and thus “become independent” from Novick and move forward with this peculiar group.
Although Novick has met with President Luis Lacalle Pou, this has been nothing more than an anecdote in a reality that is not very auspicious for a new party that is fading. And there is also the most important thing, the people who voted for him and who are disappointed.
Chronicle of an announced death of a party that ran out of people.
Juan Prandi
