Just a day before the end of the electoral campaign, in this case in Extremadura, the PP found itself once again entangled in unusual and surprising complaints linked to postal voting and the questioning of the cleanliness of the electoral system in Spain. As has already happened on the eve of the legislative elections of June 23, 2023 and on other occasions. Once again without evidence and without guessing what the concrete advantage could be for a party that has governed the country or for the popular candidate who intends to do so again, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who has the honor of having presided over Correos.
The Civil Guard has identified a gang of common delinquency, made up of five to six people, who have committed attempted thefts in different post offices in different towns of Extremadura since last October 22, when they broke into the company’s headquarters in Talamonte, in the community of Las Vegas Altas, near Mérida, and stole 10,900 euros. Neither the elections had been called, nor guessed, despite the poor relations since the start of María Guardiola’s mandate with her obligatory partners at Vox. He modus operandi The tape was repeated on November 22 in Givora, with the aggravating circumstance that this office is inside the Town Hall, where they collected 30 euros and some commercial items, packages and stamps.
Correos reported these events to the Civil Guard from the beginning because this had never happened to them before. On November 27, the group performed again at the office located inside the Villalba de los Barros town hall and won 20 euros. On December 8, an attempted theft took place at the headquarters of a public company in Badajoz, but it did not succeed. On December 15, with the elections in perspective, the theft took place in the Talavera del Real offices, but only with commercial items and no votes were hijacked.
This morning, around midnight, the gang attacked two other offices, in Santa Amalia and Fuente de Cantos, as well as a rural service point around 1:15 a.m., without any type of guard, in Torremejía. They took without authorization a safe in which 14,000 euros and 124 postal votes were deposited. They took it and later opened it with a kind of thermal lance in a place in Talavera la Real.
There was no theft or attack on the democracy of Extremadura, as candidate María Guardiola hastily denounced in a PP video and was supported by Feijóo himself and Miguel Tellado, among other leaders. The management of the Post Office contacted the Electoral Council to obtain an extension of the vote for the 124 people who had processed it and whose ballot papers appeared charred in the box. Correos contacts them and will suggest that they vote at home, with the postman’s mobile application, or go again to the nearest offices to exercise this right again.
In Extremadura, on Sunday, there are many issues at stake, but 17,500 people requested a postal vote and 16,193 cast it, or 2% of the census. It is also not clear that the 124 votes stolen and recovered all came from the PP. Voting by mail, in Extremadura and other territories of Spain, is so safe that its use has been consolidating for some time and in the last European elections it increased by 102% compared to the previous ones. The National PP, in an attempt to conceal the slippage in Extremadura, registered parliamentary initiatives to request a public treatment and custody protocol from the Central Electoral Commission.
The PP of Guardiola, who in Genoa is questioned by some officials close to Feijóo for wanting to go too “freely and alone” in this campaign, also took the opportunity to denounce in the same package that some of its members who had requested it had not received the documentation to execute the vote by mail. And they shouted again: “They are stealing our democracy. » Correos and the INE confirm having detected six cases who had not received the requested ballots.
Guardiola asked the national leadership of the PP to design a local campaign, without invasion of external leaders, nor barons, nor interviews in state media and refused to participate in the TVE debate, broadcast this Thursday, contrary to what she had demanded in other campaigns. Feijóo’s entourage has interviewed Extremadura politicians, including those from other parties, and have been told that internal vetting by the candidate’s team reflects a slowdown in her aspirations to reach the 33 seats that would give her an absolute majority and that she is still stuck at 30 minutes. These polls reflect a Vox which would also have stopped, after almost doubling its representation to between 9 and 10 deputies. This slowdown is worrying. Guardiola has called for stepping aside and leaving Vox out of the game, out of government and the influence he doesn’t want in his budgets.
On Sunday, after the polling stations closed with all the votes counted, Guardiola could celebrate a bittersweet victory over the PSOE and Vox, but begin negotiations on Monday with the ultra party at the risk of presenting a new electoral repetition as the great success of his audacious bet.
About The Author
