WhatsApp served the opposition leader with his bow. I bring you for the bill. Politics is much faster than in the past. Those who lament that it is so difficult to run a government or a party in the age of social media and instant communications will be able to use October 28, 2022 as a date to remember. Just when you think you have it all figured out, a notification on your cell phone changes your life.
The message came from Isabel Díaz Ayuso during her visit to Galicia on Thursday, one of those that fills politicians’ calendars when there is not much to do in the office. The President of Madrid was there with a unique travel plan. Visit the birthplace of Isabel Zendal, the nurse whose name was used for the “pandemic hospital” that opened in Madrid with great fanfare and is now as busy as the Castellón airport it became known for. Then a visit to the headquarters of Inditex, because it will be very busy that day, will be bad.
Ayuso and Miguel Angel Rodríguez confirmed in the media that the agreement to renew the General Council of the Judiciary has fallen apart. It could even be this week. Next, the latest. Almost four years after the end of the CGPJ’s mandate, Alberto Núñez Feijo has taken a step to reinforce his image as a pragmatic politician willing to make agreements that benefit the state. Or so to speak, the messages of the responsible persons in the party.
It’s an image that comforts many voters. Stick to your ideas, but without setting the house on fire. Sometimes these voters are enough to win an election.
But the cell phone rang with a WhatsApp message shortly before ten in the morning on Thursday. It was Ayuso who told him that the CGPJ deal would be “outrageous”. It was a call Feijo had dreaded receiving in recent weeks.
That same morning, Federico Jimenez Losantos launched one of his diatribes against Feijoo after a budget debate in Congress, where María Jesús Montero addressed the PP speaker, Cuca Gamarra. “A spectacle of incompetence,” he called it. “It almost makes me sick,” he responded to Gamara.
The sentence was death. “He was brought in so that he wouldn’t do Casado, and he’s doing the same thing,” he said. His preferences were clear: “The People’s Party endures because Ayuso endures.”
“They brought it to him.” As if it wasn’t Feijo’s decision to show up and force Pablo Casado to resign, but a line of people, among whom he clearly believes Jimenez Losantos was. Those who actually run the right side of Madrid and who at the time it was already clear that Dias Ayuso was more important than Casado. When he decided that the PP president had to go because of the allegations about his brother’s business, he had no doubt what would happen.
That same morning, El Mundo’s front page opened with an admission of insecurity by the party’s national leadership: “The PP fears a reaction from the ‘political, judicial and media right’.” It was said that the CGPJ pact was closed in the absence of the final approval of the PP, or Feiyoo. Now there was nothing more to negotiate. It remains only to determine the time and day of the agreement.
Those who opposed the party and its media and judicial environment with the argument that you can’t trust Pedro Sánchez were told, “This is pure Trumpism,” according to the article, which cited sources in the national leadership. Like scorched earth politics when justice can no longer wait for another day due to paralysis of several rooms of CGPJ and Supreme Court.
If you think a certain political response is “pure Trumpism,” you should be prepared for the response you’ll get if you don’t like its messengers. If you give the image of weakness, you will be eaten at the feet. And this will be a prologue to other incidents of the same type. This is already being said in British politics. “Not in the government, but in the position.” Being in office is not the same as being in power.
Throughout Thursday, Feijo measured his weakness and pondered how to announce his decision not to renew the CGPJ. As part of the budget debate and the convenience of Esquerra’s support, the government repeated what has long been known: it intends to change the wording of the crime of sedition in the penal code. He confirmed that he intends to “homologize” it into the legislation of other European countries. No need to lie. This also applies to the reduction of punishment, as severe as for murder.
Like everything important that happens in the PP, Feijo contacted Juanma Moreno, the president of Andalusia and the closest number two currently in the party. A council spokesman said Friday that it also opposed closing the deal. Other sources very close to Moreno confirm, on the contrary, that he let Feijo make the most appropriate decision, that he did not give an ultimatum.
Late on Thursday, the PP announced that there would be no deal on the CGPJ and referred to this reform as an insurgency. What I already knew could happen before the talks with the PSOE became an intolerable gesture that prevented the continuation of the conversations necessary to fulfill the constitutional mandate.
On Friday, Ayuso sources informed El Mundo of the presence of WhatsApp. How would they store this information? It was important that they not overstate the message, lest it appear that he had given her an order. He told her personally “out of loyalty”.
Fayo already knows how they spend their time in Madrid. It is very likely that he knew this before, but knowing this is not the same as suffering in his own flesh. In politics, a sword wound heals very badly.
Source: El Diario
