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When Pedro Sánchez was elevated to the presidency of the Socialist International (SI) at its 2022 congress in Madrid, the moment was framed as a reset. Supporters spoke of revitalisation, stronger institutions, and renewed relevance for a body that had been steadily drifting towards political marginality. Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a long-standing member of the socialist family, endorsed Sánchez precisely on those grounds.
Today, that support has curdled into open confrontation. The PRI has published a blistering letter denouncing Sánchez’s leadership in terms rarely seen within the organisation: anti-democratic conduct, authoritarian practices, and corruption. What might once have been handled quietly through internal channels has spilled into the public domain, transforming an internal dispute into a reputational crisis for both Sánchez and the Socialist International itself.
To seasoned observers of socialist politics, however, the pattern is depressingly familiar. Grand promises of renewal, followed by concentration of power; lofty moral claims, followed by opaque practices; appeals to solidarity, followed by purges of dissent. The utopia remains pristine in theory. In practice, the machinery tends to rot.
An international organisation turned into a political lever
At the centre of the PRI’s complaint is not mere administrative incompetence but something far more deliberate. According to the Mexican party, Sánchez has converted the Socialist International from a pluralist forum into a tool of political management, used to discipline critics and reshape the organisation’s internal balance of power.
The allegation is stark: marginalise the PRI and clear the way for Morena, the governing party founded by Andrés Manuel López Obrador and now led by President Claudia Sheinbaum. Unlike the PRI, Morena sits firmly within the orbit of Latin America’s populist left and maintains close ties to networks such as the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group—spaces where Sánchez has increasingly sought ideological and diplomatic alignment.
From the PRI’s perspective, this is not ideological evolution but strategic substitution: remove the awkward partner, install the useful one.
Discipline without due process
The conflict escalated when the PRI was subjected to a six-month suspension from the Socialist International. The party insists that this measure has no solid basis in the organisation’s statutes and emphasises that only a full congress can decide on expulsion. What it describes instead is a form of informal punishment, reinforced by threats and procedural ambiguity.
Sofía Carvajal, the PRI’s Secretary for International Affairs, has characterised the situation bluntly: an organisation rendered mute under the authority of its president. Her argument goes to the heart of the problem. Sánchez is not merely one leader among many within the Socialist International; he is the prime minister of Spain. That reality introduces an imbalance that, in practice, discourages resistance and encourages conformity, particularly among smaller parties that lack political cover.
This is how international organisations lose their vitality—not through dramatic ruptures, but through incremental erosion of rules, selective enforcement of norms, and the quiet substitution of governance with obedience.
The charge that raises the stakes: Venezuela and alleged financial routing
Beyond questions of procedure and internal democracy lies an allegation of a different order altogether—one that carries legal as well as political implications.
The PRI claims that the Venezuelan regime has used the Socialist International as an intermediary to move funds of dubious origin in support of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). The accusation draws on investigative journalism and on statements attributed to Víctor de Aldama, a businessman implicated in Spain’s so-called “Koldo case”, which revolves around alleged commissions linked to pandemic-era procurement contracts.
Carvajal has made clear that the PRI is prepared to pursue legal action, both civil and criminal, over what it describes as potential illicit financial channelling. She has also suggested that complaints may already be circulating beyond her party.
These claims must be treated with care. They are allegations, not judicial conclusions. But their seriousness is self-evident. When a founding member party publicly accuses the president of an international organisation of presiding over a structure in which laundering is even plausibly discussed—and where an authoritarian foreign government features prominently—the damage to institutional credibility is immediate.
Centralising control, obscuring oversight
The PRI also points to a series of administrative decisions that, taken together, illustrate what it sees as a broader transformation of the Socialist International. Chief among them is the relocation of the organisation’s financial accounts from London to Madrid. According to the PRI, substantial sums have passed through these accounts in recent years without transparent or independently verifiable reporting.
This development followed the removal of Secretary-General Benedicta Lasi, who had raised questions about financial management—a decision the PRI opposed. The sequence, in the party’s reading, is revealing: question the finances, lose your position; centralise authority, reduce scrutiny.
Such dynamics are not unique to the Socialist International. Organisations that ground their legitimacy in moral claims often react most aggressively to oversight, because scrutiny undermines the very narrative of ethical exceptionalism on which they rely.
The inner circle and institutional gravity
The PRI has also highlighted the role of Hana Jalloul, vice-president of the Socialist International and a close political ally of Sánchez. Her prominence reinforces the perception that the organisation’s operational centre has shifted decisively towards Sánchez’s immediate political environment.
From this perspective, the SI appears less as an autonomous international platform and more as an extension of a national party’s influence network. Whether that characterisation is entirely fair is open to debate, but it explains the PRI’s uncompromising stance: this is not a disagreement over policy lines, but a claim that the institution itself has been captured.
Why this matters beyond internal socialist politics
The PRI’s intervention comes at a moment when Spain is already wrestling with multiple corruption-related controversies involving the governing party and figures close to power. Without rehearsing those domestic cases here, the broader context cannot be ignored.
International accusations carry greater weight when domestic trust has already been strained. What might once have been dismissed as internal friction within a declining organisation now feeds into a wider European debate about standards of governance, accountability, and political ethics.
That is why this episode matters far beyond the Socialist International. It transforms what could have been portrayed as parochial infighting into a transnational dispute within the global left—one that affects Spain’s political standing and reverberates across Europe.
A familiar ending
Ultimately, this affair is not only about Pedro Sánchez, nor about whether the Socialist International can regain relevance. It reflects a deeper and recurring contradiction within socialist politics: movements that promise emancipation, transparency, and moral clarity repeatedly succumb to the same impulses—centralisation of power, manipulation of rules, intolerance of dissent, and a striking comfort with financial opacity once authority is secured.
There is little novelty here. The vocabulary evolves, the banners are refreshed, but the outcomes remain stubbornly consistent.
Nothing new in the socialist utopia. Only the rhetoric is ever renewed.