The general secretary of Podemos and Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, has advocated the creation of public supermarkets that allow “to confront the food oligopoly led by the capo Juan Roig (president of Mercadona)”, lower prices and protect to small and medium producers.
This has been revealed during a conference on strategic sectors organized by the purple party this Sunday in Cáceres, in which he has participated together with the United for Extremadura (UPE) candidate for the Presidency of the Board, Irene de Miguel, and other members of the formation.
According to Belarra, the pandemic has highlighted the weaknesses of the capitalist system and the need to create a public company in each strategic sector of this country, such as pharmaceuticals, technology, energy and, above all, a public supermarket chain called “fair prices” given the rise in the price of food that “cannot be explained solely and exclusively by the rise in the cost of prize materials”.
Along these lines, he has blamed private supermarkets for “speculating” with the price of food and has once again pointed to the president of Mercadona, Juan Roig, whose supermarket chain “accumulates a 25 percent market share that it uses to making people pay prices they can’t afford and raising profit margins by 65 percent on some products.”
Regarding his proposal, “they are going to say that it is impossible”, Belarra has declared; however, he has continued, “we have shown that public intervention in the economy is what works best, since it allows us to build the greatest protective shield for the people.”
“I am very proud to be the general secretary of a political formation that does not ask for a single euro from the banks of this country, which has allowed me to push the first housing law in the history of our democracy without anyone being able to pick up the phone to put pressure on me, not a bank, not an energy company, not even the real estate employers,” he said.
In his speech, Belarra has also accused the PSOE of “sharing” the space on RTVE with the Popular Party to “veto” Podemos from electoral announcements in the public environment and has asked the interim president of the Corporation, Elena Sánchez, to retract
In his opinion, the PSOE is a “very conservative force that overacts the confrontations with the wild right of the PP” since it has not minded agreeing to the reform of the law only if it is yes to “return to the Penal Code of La Manada and that the women have to show again that we resist, that we close our legs well”.
Likewise, he has criticized that the PSOE has tolerated keeping the General Council of the Judiciary without renewal for five years, “hijacking the government of the judges and breaching the Constitution, allowing the PP to oppose this government and protect its corrupt.”
“These elections are going to make Podemos disappear, they want us to get the worst possible result, they want to sweep us out of many places and we cannot allow it,” he concluded.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
