IL’s new political program approved by 97.89% of votes

The new political program of the IL was approved this Sunday by 97.89% of votes at the VIII National Congress. This document has been amended for the first time since the party was founded.

After the task of changing the charter failed the day before, since neither of the two proposals received the required two-thirds of votes, the main meeting managed to approve the Executive Committee’s proposal to change this strategic document.

Of the 522 IL members who voted, there were 511 votes in favor, 10 abstentions and one vote against, in a vote that took place in person and online.

Introducing the motion, which preceded a debate with some six dozen speeches, Liberal MP Bernardo Blanco justified the changes to the IL political programme by the need to eliminate problematic positions and political risks, as well as to introduce new topics. He also believes that the new text defends “bold ideas” in a way that “no other party does.”

The Liberal MP said it was the IL’s “ideological basis and political thought” and that it embodied what the party believed in but was not a “pamphlet or election programme”.

Noting that the current document contains “positions that are too electoral and detailed” and “contradictory positions” with those defended by IL, Bernardo Blanco said it was necessary to eliminate “some political risks” and show that the party had evolved.

As for what had changed in this new proposal, which he assured was “the most comprehensive process in the history of IL”, the MP specified that “the most problematic positions” had been removed.

“We have added new topics where the current political program says nothing. Local government, sustainable development, migration, housing. Many of them cannot be left to the discretion of other parties,” he said.

The program is divided into six axes: rights, freedoms and guarantees; political organization; sovereignty; economy; society and the social state.

Among the “bold positions” that he believes “no other party would put forward,” Bernardo Blanco noted the idea that the IL “does not consider itself a paternalistic state that imposes equality of results” or advocates a “lean state” with a transparent public administration, strong institutions, decentralized and fiscally responsible.”

“A smaller, more efficient and skilled civil service, subject to evaluation and adequate remuneration” or the idea that “both private profits and losses should not be socialized” are other aspects of this document in which liberals see themselves as the party of “the primacy of individual liberty.”