The relationship between the president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, and Vox seems to be somewhere, halfway between nowhere and oblivion, as they say in Million Dollar Baby. Since the departure of the ultras from the regional government, by order of the national leadership, Mazón has given nothing more than signs of having turned the page, despite the fact that he needs Vox’s 10 votes in the Cortes to move forward with his proposals.
The agreement between PP and Vox to form a coalition government was forged in just two hours. And it took less time to get rid of, since the popular leader did not wait even to dismiss the ultra councilors after the announcement of leaving the regional Executives made by Santiago Abascal on July 11. It only took him one night to find a replacement for them. He did not even let them present their resignation and allow them the honorable “I’m leaving”, knowing that they were doing nothing more than obeying an instruction from their party, just as he himself has to do with Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s PP, even though he disagrees with the Valencian interests. The jokes are over. And, as if it were a matter of spite, just three days later and after deciding to maintain a solitary Government, he began to make eyes at socialists and Compromís, to extend his hand to them and display his supposed desire for consensus, a possibility that the parties of the opposition did not believe and rejected “the ultra agenda” that, in their opinion, Mazón maintains.
The rapid drift away was even more evident during the debate on the state of the region. But, by then, the general secretary of Vox, Ignacio Garriga, had already said that the decision to support the regional budgets will be made “in a unitary manner”, that is, without taking into account the singularities of each territory. Support will not depend on what the Valencian deputies consider or how much Mazón gives in to the ultras’ requests, but on what Abascal says. Perhaps for this reason, in a speech lasting more than three hours, with which he broke all the records recorded in the regional chamber, Carlos Mazón forgot about Vox until almost the end. And, in fact, he did not even plan to mention, according to the draft of his speech, those who until two months ago had been his government partners.
The Vox spokesperson, José María Llanos, blamed him: “Allow me, with a little pride, that you missed him talking about the actors of what the government has done for 52 weeks. “I think that reference would have been correct,” he said. “I have thanked them several times, I have,” Mazón replied angrily, although he only mentioned them on one occasion.
The reproaches, the distancing and the attempt to make invisible that the PP is involved in with Vox were even more evident on the second day of the debate on the state of the community, during which the proposals were debated. The Popular Party had time to defend their initiatives, to which they added all the time allocated to rejecting those of the Socialists and Compromís, despite the fact that Vox was in the same block, voting with them. Thus he monopolized four hours of prominence in the pulpit, for only one for Vox and despite the fact that on the first day the president of the Generalitat had already given a good account of his right to intervene without a time limit.
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Llanos must have realized the trilerism of the popular party shortly after, given the fuss with which he left the chamber, according to parliamentary sources. Perhaps for this reason, the ultra spokesperson ran to his office to record a video that he later posted on social networks and in which he accuses the PP of aligning with the socialists and of not supporting three “fundamental proposals for us”, related to immigration, politics linguistics and climate laws. Days later, these issues became the red lines that the popular should not cross to obtain the support of the ultras on the budgets. “When one does not have an absolute majority it is necessary to reach agreements,” he said. “There will be issues on which Vox can give in and others on which it cannot.” He added, ignoring or wanting to forget that he will not be the one to decide what his parliamentary group will do when the accounts arrive at the Autonomous Chamber.
“Life is easier” since Santiago Abascal made it clear that it is the national leadership that rules over all Vox members, PP sources said a few days ago. The ultras have been left out in the open, without shelter, and tantrums are the only thing they have left.
Carlos Mazón plays not only with the fact that the deputies’ strings move from Madrid. He is also aware that they will never support the proposals of socialists and Compromís: “As is evident, it is impossible for Vox to support the proposals of this radical left,” said spokesperson José María Llanos. Thus, few would understand that they would refuse some accounts that the PP is going to prepare without counting on them and of which they will know at the same time as the rest of the groups, when they arrive at the Cortes. Even so, fearful that they will opt for systematic denial, Mazón, from time to time, offers praise: “I don’t think I am suspected of not being grateful for Vox’s work,” he even said in the Cortes. “I’m sorry,” he expressed about the departure of the three advisors from the Valencian Government, those whom he replaced in hours.
Sources close to the president maintain that the PP leader continues to take into account the Vox deputies, that they have not forgotten him and that he trusts that, finally, they will have autonomy to decide what they do with the budgets. “We work with that scenario,” they say.
But in the ideology of Valencian political history is what happened with Unión Valenciana. And with Citizens. Sources from the PP, including socialists, venture to expose the similarities in the relationship between that PP of Eduardo Zaplana and the UV of Vicente González Lizondo and those of the current PP with the Valencian deputies of Vox.
It is not unreasonable that Carlos Mazón, as a political disciple of Zaplana, has also thought about it. That maneuver of the 90s ended with the Valencian Union charges phagocytosed by the PP. Charges were distributed. The current president of the Generalitat already has experience. Not in vain, one of the seats in the Valencian government is occupied by a former Ciudadanos deputy, Ruth Merino, to whom Mazón has also given the spokesperson for the Executive.
For now, the PP will sit down with the Government to negotiate the Concord Law, which Vox demanded, and try to avoid an appeal to the Constitutional Court, after the suspension of the rule in Aragon, very similar to the Valencian one. In Castilla y León, the PP, which had not yet approved the law, has already left the text in a drawer. Now Carlos Mazón will have to show if he resumes the love affair with Vox or, really, wants to seek consensus in the rest of the parties
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