Reformist Centre, or Reformist centre, is a political term used in various countries around the world to define various kinds of political thought, but always connected with the centre, moderation and social reformism.
The Spanish People's Party is the main political force to use the term Reformist centre. Reformist Centre is used by the People's Party for defining itself ideologically since the second half of the 1990s, with the intention of including all the ideologies that it affirms to have in its middle: right, conservatism, Christian democracy, and liberalism. According to the article 2, of the status of the People's Party:
The People's Party defines itself as a political formation of the reformist centre to the service of the general interests of Spain, which has the person as the axis of its political action and social progress as one of its objectives. With clear European vocation and inspiration in the values of freedom, democracy, tolerance and Christian humanism of western tradition, defends the rights of the human being and its inherent rights and liberties; it secures democracy and the rule of law as the basis of social living and coexistence in freedom; it promotes, inside a market economy, territorial solidarity, modernisation and social cohesion as well as equal opportunity and the lead role of society through the participation of the citizens in political life; it advocates for an international community founded in peace and universal respect of the human rights.
This move on Aznar to use this term is frequently accused of simple marketing of ideas, use of an ambiguous term or of being just a right-wing/centre-right answer to social democrat/social liberal Third Way, trying to give a new moderate and centrist image to the rightist PP, without actually moving it to the centre, instead of an actual re-ideologisation, adopting some Christian democratic concepts without actually adopting the ideology, not losing votes from other ideologies in the party. Similar steps taken by the party include the adoption by the party, since 1996, of socialistII Republic politician Manuel Azaña's legacy.
Use elsewhere
The term is also used elsewhere, not always in a way synonym to the PP's:
The Andorran Reformist Coalition, also claimed to follow reformist centre politics ;
in Portugal during the Marcelo Caetano phase of the Estado Novo, some opposition politicians in the Liberal Wing of the National Assembly, gathered around José Pedro Pinto Leite, described themselves as reformist centrists.
In Venezuela, COPEI has since 2007 refused the right-wing categorization and adopted the self-description of «humanist and reformist centre»
Retroactive use
The term has been retroactively been used to refer to radicals and such centrist elements of the reform movement.
