Nervousness begins to spread in Vox to see that just at the halfway point of the legislature, the latest polls, both the CIS and those published by different media, give them a stagnation with respect to the results they achieved in 2019, and even a small setback, while the PP of Pablo Casado advances and is managing to shorten distances with the PSOE of Pedro Sánchez.
Faced with the collapse of Ciudadanos, which has squandered almost all of its assets, PP and Vox need each other to aspire to govern and be the alternative to the current leftist coalition government. Both Abascal and Casado know this, but the leader of the PP has set himself the goal of scraping as many votes as possible from the extreme right to ensure a majority, if not absolute – a very difficult challenge, not to say impossible to achieve – then enough to ensure that Vox has as little influence as possible. The Popular Party knows that in Europe it would be difficult to explain a pact with the extreme right for the governance of the State, like those already established for autonomous regions and municipalities.
However, if Vox falls much from its current position – 52 deputies and third political force in Congress – the sum will not be easy either, unless Arrimadas manages, as she intends, to refloat her formation, something that at the moment does not seem to happen. So each party measures its strategies to face these two years that remain until the appointment of 2023 in the best possible conditions.
Abascal’s party is already with the resistance manual to maintain its current status quo in Congress and prevent a significant and hypothetical transfer of votes to the PP. That is why they have increased their attacks against Pablo Casado’s party, who they do not forgive for having facilitated with his abstention a few weeks ago that the Assembly of Ceuta declared Santiago Abascal persona non grata for branding part of the Ceuta society, which is Muslim, and the institutional representatives of the Autonomous City as ‘pro-Moroccan’ and ‘fifth columnists’ of the annexationist aspirations of the Alaouite Kingdom.
The proposal was promoted by the Movement for Dignity and Citizenship (MDyC) and went ahead with the 10 votes in favor of PSOE, MDyC and the Coalition CabaThe motion was defeated by the four votes against Vox but thanks to the nine abstentions of the councillors of the PP. Although Abascal then declared relations with the PP “broken” and accused Casado of “collaborating in the campaign of demonization” against his formation, he gave them the opportunity to repair “their mistake” by presenting a subsequent motion for the Ceuta Assembly to revoke that statement. A move that showed that they were never going to materialize such a threat.
The same spokesman of the far-right formation, Jorge Buxadé, who implied that his party, in retaliation for that abstention, would stop supporting the popular governments in communities and municipalities where they are necessary, was forced the next day to qualify his words. However, the PP leadership had not taken very seriously the ordago launched by Vox, the umpteenth in the last three years of convulsive political relationship between the two parties, and whose most tense moment must be focused on the motion of censure presented by Abascal against Pedro Sánchez a year ago. That debate was used by Casado to launch harsh attacks on Abascal, to the astonishment of the leader of Vox who did not digest well that the PP did not support his initiative.
Since then, the criticism and the attacks between the two have not ceased, which has led the popular insist on sending the leaders of the far-right formation the same message to tell them that “they have the wrong enemy” because who they should attack “is the Government which, faced with the problems arising in the health crisis, hides its head, is missing and does not coordinate”.
The leaders of Vox meanwhile admit that the personal relationship of Casado and Abascal broke the day that the leader of the PP intervened in the mcoión of censure against Sánchez to announce his vote against and launch a harsh diatribe against the extreme right.
In the national headquarters of Genoa 13 reigns some euphoria especially after the judge of the Kitchen case has disassociated María Dolores de Cospedal of that corruption scheme. Cospedal was the key person for the current president to win the primaries and Casado’s team believes that it will be easier to mark distances with the past of corruption with Cospedal out of court. They do not believe that this scourge will dent their electoral prospects since they know that Sanchez is willing to exhaust as his mandate, which in the end benefits them by moving away in time that shadow that now hangs over the party. That is why they have celebrated that the judge of the National Court, Manuel García Castellón, has given a turn to the macrocausa on the business of Commissioner Villarejo to plug the investigation to the former leadership of the PP. Decisions like that makes him ratify its decision not to lend itself to the renoThe Government has been demanding the creation of the General Council of the Judiciary for many months, and your party has no intention of facilitating any other agreement with it.
With all the wickerwork he is weaving, and once he has given Ciudadanos for ‘dead’ politically, Casado believes that the PP can form a “government majority that brings together votes from across the center right and even from the social democrats betrayed by Sánchez”, whom the PP leader always cites.
“When the Popular Party is the alternative of Government to Sánchez that agglutinates the votes of the entire center right and that, even, receives social democratic votes, we generally have sufficient majorities of Government”.#SánchezNoCumple
@pablocasado_ pic.twitter.com/7eQdzoLtmn-
Partido Popular (@populares) July 29, 2021
But Vox are not willing to be ‘phagocytized’ and fight hard to prove that they are the “only party that truly defends the Spanish” and represents “the real alternative” to the PSOE and Sanchez’s allies, who in the opinion of Abascal’s formation form a “criminal” government. The struggle has made them raise the tone to see who makes more noise against the pardons to the pro-independence; the penitentiary policy of the Government and the approach of prisoners of ETA to the Basque Country; the table of dialogue and concessions “to the separatists”; the defense of the Spanish in the classrooms or the rise of light. A few days ago, the far-right formation boasted on their Twitter account of being “the only ones who defend without complexes the legality and fundamental rights of the Spanish” and boasted of the numerous appeals that in less than two years they have filed against the policies of Sánchez.
The relentless opposition of VOX in the courts: 93 judicial proceedings in less than two years.
The only ones who defend without complexes the legality and the fundamental rights of the Spanish.#VOXÚtil 🇪🇸 pic.twitter.com/hUdRL0b8Qe-
VOX 🇪🇸 (@vox_es) August 9, 2021
Vox has even charged against those of Casado to whom he also reproached that “while the PP continues to attack VOX, it begs for the vote of the PNV. They have not yet understood who are the real enemies of Spain,” referring to statements by the parliamentary spokeswoman, Cuca Gamarra, in which she said she was “convinced” that the Basque nationalists will have repented of “promoting” the motion of censure against Mariano Rajoy.
All this has led to Abascal to challenge Casado to present in September a motion of censure against Sánchez similar to the one he presented a year ago and which failed without garnering a single support more than that of the 52 deputies of his group. This request has been joined by Inés Arrimadas, the leader of Ciudadanos, who has little or nothing to lose in that debate, except to get head in that debate given that Sánchez does not seem willing to convene now the one he has pending on the State of the Nation.
However, the leader of the PP has rejected the envoy of the two leaders claiming that this initiative would only contribute to “agglutinate the frankenstein majority” of Pedro Sánchez, which has given rise to call again “coward” while Casado insists that where you have to garnarle is in the polls. In passing, he has reminded Abascal that in Andalusia the polls already place the PP “close to the absolute majority” and in Madrid Isabel Díaz Ayuso “took more seats than the entire left together”.
The conservative leader insists that he “does not maintain a personal issue” with Abascal but that they are two parties that at least “do agree” in “trying to make this government last as little as possible”. “Each one has its strategy. I can not judge what Vox does and Vox does not judge what the PP does,” Casado said a few days ago.
On the return of the summer it will be seen if Vox decides to star in a second motion of censure against Sanchez or continues to focus on eroding the leader of the PP, his rival on the right and with whom he competes for the same electorate.
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