“If we knew that this would be the result, María Guardiola would not have delayed the elections.” The reflection, from a PP baron, sums up the feeling in certain sectors of the party that there is no shortage of bags for this trip. The extreme president and candidate of the PP pressed the electoral button with the aim of loosening ties with Vox, which prevented her from approving the hypotheses, but sold the ballot boxes practically with the same dependence on an extreme right generated by the ballot boxes and which counts on four essential votes to be able to govern. The result of Vox in Extremadura, which did not expect to be so high, alarmed the PP baronets who are being examined in this electoral cycle. “Vox was underestimated,” recognizes a popular president, who believes that he must also take note of the fact that Guardiola “made a mistake with a flat campaign and a low profile”.
The problem with Guardiola’s result, who received a commendable 43% of the vote in a historic left-wing stronghold, is the “mismanagement of expectations” on the part of some PP leaders. Guardiola won the elections, but only created one box (29), four times the absolute majority and found himself in the hands of a very large Vox, which doubled its numbers (11). It wasn’t what I expected. Meanwhile, the PP fell to the lowest level of the results that the polls predicted, with Vox having suffered a setback and that of Abascal having exceeded the highest level of the polls. “The PP extremeño has decided to go for an absolute majority, but have they lost their juicio? And above all, there is a sleepless campaign during certain elections which are celebrated in the middle of Christmas, on December 21!”, says a territorial leader.
Guardiola’s campaign, with a low profile saved by the controversy surrounding his alleged refusal of a hundred votes in a Correos office, receives numerous criticisms within the PP. The PP candidate gave very few interviews, did not attend the electoral debate on TVE and spent full days without an agenda in the final stretch, in order not to make any mistakes. “When you leave with the handbrake on, the engine seizes,” asks another territorial leader. “Even more so,” added a popular advisor, “when you have such a strong competitor for the right.”
The PP also criticizes Guardiola’s personal conflict with the Vox leader, whom he called “macho” during the campaign and who must now come to terms. “We cannot win at Vox through ideological questions, but through management,” reflects a baron in reference to Guardiola’s feminist proposal, little followed in the PP. “To the voters of Vox, you can also echarles órdagos, because they tell you that you will enter.”
The question that now appeals to the rest of the territories going to the polls ―Aragon, February 8; Castile and León, in March; and Andalusia, in June― this is how to face the strong growth of Vox which represented Extremadura. The baronets have learned that they must give their all. It’s harder to press the button to end Vox. The president of Andalusia, Juanma Moreno Bonilla, admitted that she “worries” about the rise of Vox and recognized that “it is therefore very difficult to have an absolute majority in any territory.” “Vox will only begin to decline when it enters the government and assumes responsibilities,” reflected Moreno Bonilla, who believes that then “their policies, which are not viable on many occasions,” will be dismantled.
The Andalusian president’s reflection is a paradox which is now being heard in the PP. After the stage where the people suffered trying to prevent Vox from entering their autonomous governments – although it did not succeed and formed five coalition executives, which ended up unilaterally breaking Abascal – some leaders believed that from now on the PP would be interested in the opposite. This is how Vox will once again enter its autonomous government and will be exhausted by power, as eventually happens to all populist parties.
“The problem is that the people who tend to implement this strategy are the ones who like it the least,” a senior executive says of Guardiola, the self-governing president who has clashed most with Vox. It is very clear that the PP is going to make the president extreme in the functions to be invested, although the crisis of the PSOE ―with the reduction of its candidate, Miguel Ángel Gallardo, due to the dedication of the socialists to their historic foundation with 18 deputies― could make things easier. The former president of Extremeño, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra, asked the PSOE to facilitate Guardiola’s inauguration with an abstention.
Genoa maintains, however, that it “does not trust the PSOE” to ask it to abstain and that it expects Vox to lower the price of its support because it only demands its abstention and not an affirmative vote. “It is not the same thing that me dejes el coche a que me lo regales”, illustrate sources from the PP dome. Popular leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo this month urged Abascal to allow the PP government of Extremadura to “never again be considered an adversary.”
The popular believe that Vox will not ask to enter the government of its candidate, but they are wary of all of Abascal’s movements. For example, who demands the presidency of the Parliament of Extremadura, because this would allow Vox to control the timing of the inauguration and place it right in the middle of the campaign for the next elections in Aragon. “Vox has experienced a notable rise which we respect”, underline sources from the national leadership, “but the PP also demands respect from its electorate”.
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