Ciudadanos has begun the countdown to the next challenge: the municipal and regional elections at the end of May 2023, an appointment that is just seven months away and that the party’s leadership has begun to prepare frantically knowing its results. Whether the brand will ultimately depend. The new electoral threshold will make it very difficult for Ines Arimadas and the party to survive. The party leader, for now, is keeping quiet about his future plans, while the PP continues to throw the cane at Begonia Villachis to shut down the only iteration of votes they might have left in Madrid.
However, in the party, they are not deterred and claim that they will be “decisive” for the formation of the government in various regional parliaments and many town halls, because the “liberal” project they represent is still “necessary”. The message is the same one they repeated before other recent elections – such as the elections in Andalusia and before that in Castilla y León. However, the reality they faced was quite different. The PP – and even Vox – hold on to their electorate and continue to spread their tentacles wherever they can to make them disappear. They try this in Madrid with Begonia Villachi, who became the only hope of Ciudadanos not to die. Everything is still unknown.
By now, the formation will complete the re-establishment process that started last June and will conclude with an extraordinary general assembly scheduled for January 13, 14 and 15, 2023, where they will try to renew the project. They should come to the appointment with the updated address. So they fixed the date of internal primary. They will be between January 9 and 10, 2023, a few days before the conclave, before the General Council, the party’s highest body, approves the proposal at its next meeting, given that its members can make changes. .
Among them all, the big unknown remains whether Ines Arimadas will stand for re-election to continue as party leader. Last Monday, the leader of the formation remained silent on future plans when asked about it during a press conference he offered after an electronic meeting with members of the national executive. This is not the first time he has done this. Arimadas has been posting messages and comments that sound like goodbyes for quite some time, though he’s never been categorical.
The truth is that most of the leaders still don’t know whether Arimadas wants to continue or decide to pass the baton to someone else. And those who know this do not want to confirm or deny anything, although there are those who bet that the Jerez-born will not run again and will only remain the president of the parliamentary group until the end of the legislature. If so, the only alternative Ciudadanos has for survival is Begoña Villacís, who has not specified whether he will run again as a City Council candidate. The deputy mayor of Madrid, who claims to be a “very friend” of Arimadas, has actively and passively reiterated that he does not intend to go to the PP, but those who know him say that he will not look down on the possibility of negotiations. Joint candidacy in future municipal and autonomous elections. In their circle, such a possibility is neither denied nor confirmed, despite the fact that they know that the party leader does not like this idea. On his part, Almeida made it clear that PP will attend Madrid only with initials.
For now, all the siren songs that have been fired at him these days from the ranks of Feijo’s party have been avoided by insisting that he will continue to defend the “liberal” project. The debate will be raised again in the General Assembly, as will the name change to replace the Ciudadanos brand, which is too worn, with the “Liberal Party” or simply “Liberales”.
Last Wednesday, the celebration of La Almudena, Villas himself interrupted before taking part in the mass in the cathedral of Madrid that “the initials should be seen” because Ciudadanos is in the process of being re-established and “it is one. of the issues that will be discussed at the meeting”. But his plans, and I No.
The problem facing the leadership now is the selection of regional candidates, not so much as municipal ones, given that in several communities the party has experienced a serious crisis or practically disappeared. Many of the leaders who were once referents of Ciudadanos are no longer here. This Saturday, Arrimadas tried to encourage his people to present fifty mayoral candidates in the municipalities of Andalusia in an act held in Seville. “We are not dead” and “we must go with our heads held high,” encouraged the leader of Ciudadanos. “Here are those of us who have no price, those who do not sell ourselves,” he said later on the visible faces of the councilors and Ciudadanos in this community a few months ago who elected. to work in PP in various fields such as Juan Marin himself. “Those who don’t want to participate in the project, don’t worry,” asked the leader.
Desertions to anger the leaders who now run the formation that now calls itself “liberal” have continued all these months. Last Tuesday, without further ado, the entire leadership of Toledo resigned over accusations of a “lack of transparency” in the nomination of Toledo’s mayoral candidate, a process they say was carried out “behind the backs of party militants.” Dissidents recently announced the launch of a new project: “Here Now”.
In September, the secretary of the Citizens’ Organization, Borja González, who had replaced Fran Hervias, defected to the PP and was later dismissed by its new leader, Alberto Núñez Feijo. In October, the president of Barcelona’s municipal group, Luz Guilarte, opened the door, just a week after the party leadership there, led by Carlos Carrizosa, began the process of expelling councilor Paco Sierra “for declaring himself president”. He is going to lead the candidacy of the Sakrebulo in the upcoming elections without calling the primaries. Casualties in Ciudadano de Catalunya have been a common trend these months. The most famous marcher of the group led by Manuel Valls was Celestino Corbacho. Left “for personal reasons”. It is also worth noting the departure of Marilen Barcelo in May 2021 due to disagreements with the party. Barcelo asked Barcelona to join for Canvi, now renamed Valents.
This weekend, Arimadas tried to deny that he is struggling to recruit candidates. In Valencia, he took it “for granted” that the formation would have a list to present in the regional elections for the Generalitat Valenciana. However, when asked who will lead this list, he refrained from naming names and only said that “the processes established by the party charter” would be followed scrupulously. “We are ready and I assume that we will have an autonomous list in the Valencian community, because it is also necessary: we have been bipartisan for 40 years, 40 years in which the PP and the PSOE had an absolute majority. and in which the community of Valenciana is abandoned,” he said.
Arimadas also predicted that the party would continue to participate “both in the municipal elections and in all the regional elections scheduled for the same date.” But internal turmoil and a constant stream of defects make this task difficult. No one knows, for example, who will lead the Madrid Assembly candidacy against Isabel Diaz Ayuso after the fiasco involving Edmundo Bal. So far, the only one who has stepped forward has been Las Rosas economist and activist Juan Carlos Bermejo, who is already well versed in these processes, having announced on social networks almost two months ago that he will present a primary, a process that the party wants to celebrate once the issues are resolved. , who are already calling for a renewal of the national leadership.
Source: El Diario
