Criticism of Feijóo’s campaign barons: “Repeated errors, such as those related to pensions and Marcial Dorado, affected”

Publicly, the People’s Party barons They organized closed classes with Alberto Núñez Figo on Monday at the National Board of Directors meeting. But provincial leaders are particularly skeptical of the People’s Party leader’s campaign, which led the party to a victory in an election that is insufficient to govern, far short of their expectations. “I am convinced that repeated mistakes, such as pensions or ridiculous lapses, and Marcial Dorado have had an effect,” says one of the barons, who believes that for Figo the impact of the demographic drop detected by opinion polls in the fateful last week was clear. PP chiefs also point to the agreements with Vox as a drag on 23-J’s outcome, while lamenting that polls led them wrong.

Despite the criticism, the internal clamor will not translate into a leadership crisis for Vigo in the short term. The regional leaders with heavyweights of the People’s Party, Isabel Diaz Ayuso and Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, support the Galician politician, who won the election, to lead the People’s Party’s candidacy again if there is an electoral repeat. Also as leader of the opposition in Sanchez’s rule. In the meantime, they urge him to try to install him, even if his chances of success are remote, so that he cannot be blamed for not trying, “as happened to Ines Arimadas in Catalonia”, as they emphasized in Ayusu’s environment. At the Madrid Conference, they believe it is a “strategic mistake” for the President of Madrid to move the dispute over her leadership and the leadership of the opposition “without a seat in Congress” and “the loss of the power of government by the absolute majority of the Madrid community”.

The advisory barons identified the “accumulation of reasons” behind Feijó’s bitter victory in the Generals. “When a plane crashes, there are many factors that influence it,” sums up a regional head of the People’s Party. But many of them agree that the last week of the campaign was key for the right not to get an absolute majority, despite the fact that the party was expecting it. “It’s not that PP’s campaign was clean, but last week… Feijóo started hitting the journalist and he has to correct, then if it’s his absence in the debate, what if it’s lower back pain, what if it’s drugs…”, lists the PP boss, who also finds more wrongdoing, such as “talk that an absolute majority of PP was possible and the attacks that Feijóo made”.

Many People’s Party bosses believe that the problems of the last week of the campaign were seen in a demographic decline in recent days. “In the end, going from 155 seats to 136 is a drop of two points. Well, those two little points have been lost in the last four days,” points out a baron, who also points to the problem of Figo’s friendship with drug trafficker Marcial Dorado three decades ago. “I’m beginning to think the drug deal is socially acceptable in Galicia, but perhaps not in the rest of Spain… There was a shift in the last four days of the campaign that coincided with this issue being brought up on the media agenda.”

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At the party they also regret it to fail from surveys Not all of them, because both cis and 40db. For EL PAÍS, they delivered a very similar result in the end― mislead them. “The GPS was pointing us wrong,” sums up a populist chief who believes Narciso Michavila, head of GAD3, Labor’s trusted pollster, “has hit the balls cake.” However, they cautioned at PP that it was obvious “when you take all the pollsters, and see that there was no development, that something was going on underneath,” says this baron. Nobody in the dome wanted to see her.

What was happening, according to many in the People’s Party, was an unexpected mobilization of the left. “What seemed to us to be a disastrous campaign by Pedro Sánchez, it turns out that he was mobilizing the left. That, and the role of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which was important, ”analyze the sources in the Madrid PP. “It was a big surprise,” confirmed sources in Puerta del Sol, seat of the Community of Madrid government, who do not judge Vigo’s campaign too harshly.

This mobilization of the progressive vote was also affected, according to other weighty votes in the People’s Party, by the fact that Vox acted “irresponsibly”, emphasizing its more extreme image, which torpedoed Feijóo’s moderate strategy in Catalonia. “Vox has rallied urban Catalan progressives by talking about applying Article 155 again,” complains one baron. This president considers that Feijóo failed to emulate the Andalusian move of being voted out by those who wanted to avoid a government with Vox: “The vote against Vox was Sánchez, not Feijóo”.

Ironically, despite these readings, little of the CPC goes back to regional agreements with Vox to explain the outcome of the general election. But there are those who believe that the far right is “polluting” and that the agreements have not been managed well. “Since everything was done so quickly, they probably had an effect,” argues one baron.

internal noise

There is internal noise in the People’s Party, but despite this, the party in the short and medium term is paralyzed in a waiting pattern without expecting a leadership crisis. The key bears above all two names: Isabel Diaz Ayuso and Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, the two most influential and popular barons of the People’s Party, both of whom gave their open and public support to Figo. First, so that he can try to be installed, but also later, if there is a re-election, so that he can put himself forward as a candidate again.

In the event that Sanchez can govern with a parliamentary sum, Ayuso will also support Figo as opposition leader, according to sources from the Madrid Popular Party. Another scenario will open if Feijóo fails once again to repeat the elections. In this hypothesis, the Madrid People’s Party recognizes the possibility of opening the succession melon of the Galician politician. But there are still many missing screens for it.

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