The candidate of the Por Andalucía coalition for the Junta in the next Andalusian elections, Antonio Maíllo, has confirmed his intention to combine the seat he aspires to obtain in Parliament with his responsibility as federal coordinator of Izquierda Unida (IU), a position for which he was elected in the primaries of May last year.
This is what Antonio Maíllo himself said in an interview with Europa Press in which he defended that “it is compatible” to be the federal coordinator of the IU and leader of the parliamentary group that he hopes to obtain for Andalusia in the next legislature, and he explained that he wanted to “concentrate” his “institutional efforts in the Andalusian sphere”, a land that he knows and “in which it was considered that I could be useful at this time “, he added.
“This does not mean that it cannot have federal responsibility,” added Antonio Maíllo, who in this regard considered that “this era has broken many certainties about ‘protocols’ or certain relationships” on the fact that, “depending on where one occupies the political position of a party, one must participate in certain elections or others”.
“It’s not incompatible”
In this sense, he indicated that he believes that “you must participate where you collectively think you are most useful”, and he is “convinced” that where you can be “most useful” is “in Andalusia”, where he “likes to do politics”, then adding insisting on the idea that “this is not incompatible with the leadership of a federal direction” in an organization like Izquierda Unida.
“In addition, I think I am helping something that is very important for the relationship with the rest of the country, that is, when Andalusia has more importance, things will go better in the State, and if I can contribute to that, I will do it, but obviously from participation in an institutional front like that of the Andalusian Parliament, which I already know, in which I feel comfortable and in which I feel very excited to carry out a political project like this”, a added the UI leader.
On the other hand, Antonio Maíllo assessed the situation of IU Andalucía six years after, in 2019, leaving his general coordination and being relieved of this responsibility by Toni Valero, who in this legislature is also a national deputy in Congress from the province of Málaga within the Sumar group.
Toni Valero in front
Maíllo defended that, “thanks to its territorial implantation, to the installation of hundreds of councilors and mayors who approach a hundred”, the Andalusian federation of the IU “was able to maintain itself in a very turbulent environment”.
“Without this extension of local assemblies, of roots in the territories, of direct contact with society without intermediaries, we would not have resisted or endured,” warned Antonio Maíllo, who thus estimated that, “despite all the upheavals that this cycle has had,” IU transfers its “unitary will” to the Andalusian left with “an electoral proposal” like that of Por Andalucía.
The former coordinator of IU Andalucía maintained that “the capillarity and territorial extension” of said federation “helps a lot to any self-respecting project”, and in this regard he emphasized that even if “we are experiencing a digital transformation, politics is a profoundly human activity, and direct contact in the territories is fundamental for us, and will be fundamental in the role that Izquierda Unida Andalucía plays in the Andalusian electoral process”.
Regarding Toni Valero, his predecessor as coordinator of the IU Andalucía defended that he is a leader who “showed leadership in extremely difficult conditions”, marked by the Covid-19 pandemic or the processes of confluence of left-wing formations, “first in Unidas Podemos then in Sumar”, as well as by “the management of the Andalusian Government” of Juanma Moreno (PP-A).
Maíllo thus defended that Valero carried out all these complicated processes in a “responsible” manner and is “a person perfectly established in the management of Izquierda Unida” in Andalusia, he concluded.
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