Monday, April 24, 2023, 2:01 p.m.
The red line has already been crossed. The Orihuela PP candidate, Pepe Vegara, has received notification of the opening of an oral trial for the alleged commission of two crimes against the public Treasury and one for falsifying a commercial document. It only remains for the party’s regional executive to decide whether to apply the party’s statutes orthodoxly and remove Vegara from the electoral race, or persist in his staunch defense, as they made clear last Friday in the popular conclave in the Montepinar sports center.
If the news of that open investigation broke last Friday barely an hour before Vegara was to greet the president of the Valencian PP, Carlos Mazón, and the party’s general secretary, Cuca Gamarra, this time the occasion could not have been more inopportune for the popular. The decision came only a few minutes after the candidate announced the members of the list presented this Monday before the court.
After reading the names on the PP list, Pepe Vegara also gave an account of his procedural situation. The candidate acknowledged that the case in which he is accused of two alleged tax crimes, despite the fact that, as he indicated on Friday, it was filed in 2015, has been reopened. And he wanted to make it clear that it is not a process that affects him exclusively, but that his partners would also be involved, who, like him, are members of the Administration Committee of the management company of the ITV stations.
«In 2007 an employee mismanaged and, four years later, the Treasury contacted us and denounced our company. As jointly responsible for the issues of my company, I am accused like the rest of the members of the Board of Directors, ”Pepe Vegara stressed.
“In 2015 that case was archived and it is true that there was a reopening later.” An end that, he explained, he was unaware of on Friday and that he has been dealing with his lawyers all weekend. «I did not have reliable news, there was a little confusion, but what has to be clear is that it was not my effort. There is nothing in the file that links me to that case because there is no signature or document.
He also explained that once he and his partners ascertained the “malpractice” of this employee, he was fired, although, he acknowledged, “he was not denounced because some of the directors interceded for him.” A decision that, according to Vegara himself, was made due to the delicate economic situation that the dismissed person was going through.
«It is very curious that a case that was archived in 2015 is reactivated and done with this virulence and pointing to me directly as if it were my direct management. My company has a disagreement with Haciendo, they denounce it and I, as a member of the board of directors, answer for my company in solidarity, “insisted the mayor.
The candidate, however, did not enter to assess whether the opening of an oral trial against him will have a negative impact on his electoral prospects. «If this hinders the campaign, Orihuela must decide. If it does, those who put this into circulation with the intention and malice with which they do it, surely they will have done their job well. But I am sure that we and the party are capable of doing the job better than them, that we are capable of telling the project that we have for Orihuela better than those who come to tangle and dirty.
Even so, Vegara preferred to send an optimistic message that he based on the polls. “I am convinced that we have to win 15 councilors, we do not have polls but the ones we have previously conducted treat us very well.”
“Our campaign is going to be clean. We have to be concerned about telling what our project is without dealing with what others are doing and talking about things from 2023 and not from 2007, “he launched as a warning to the opposition.
Regarding whether he fears that the opening of an oral trial, as established by the statutes of the popular, could put an end to his ephemeral political adventure, he said: “I understand that those who have pending issues with the justice system due to their political management should move away.” , subscribed in line with the statements of Carlos Mazón last Friday. «I am not sure that a person who is tangentially involved in a matter of 16 years ago and who is clear about the work he wants to do for and for Orihuela has to turn away from doing that work precisely because some are capable of moving a question of 16 years ago ».
In Vegara’s opinion, this campaign will be a dichotomy between those who want to advance in Orihuela and those who want the city to continue to be linked to the worst examples of political exercise. «We are convinced that the way of doing politics can be changed, that the time has come for us politicians to be able to speak to each other with respect, that politics begins to reach the citizen as a noble activity. That is why I believe that it would not be legal for those who make mistakes in 2023 to stay and those of us who are tangentially implicated by something that happened in 2007 to leave, because we would be agreeing with those who continue trying to make politics dirty, sneaky and liar.”
renewing list
Vegara’s explanations about his judicial situation thus eclipsed the presentation of the plan with which the PP aspires to reconquer one of its traditional fiefdoms. Even so, the list showed that, once again, the rumor mill has its share of truth. If in the Oriolan political gossip a change of direction was predicted in the PP with the arrival of Pepe Vegara, the list has left no room for doubt. Of all those who presented themselves in 2019, only Councilor Víctor Valverde repeats and he will do so from number three, since number two will be occupied by Agustina Rodríguez Navarro.
The list of the popular thus also incorporates two independents: Vicente Pina (number 7) and the president of Claro, Antonio Cerdán (number 14). The Orihuela Costa party, as announced last weekend, will run alongside the PP in these elections after breaking the alliance that united them in the 2019 elections with Cambiemos.
“We understand that it is a party that wants things to change on the coast. We all know how it is, totally abandoned and neglected, “said the mayor, who thanked the generosity of Cerdán and his family in adhering to his project.
«It is a list in which you have to thank a lot to those who are and a lot to those who are not. I want to give thanks for the generosity that all the members of the PP have had in being part of a project that is called to govern Orihuela”, declared Pepe Vegara.
Before Pepe Vegara took the floor, the president of the Spanish Association against Cancer in Orihuela, Irene Celdrán (number 10), announced that this Monday, after seven years, she resigned as head of said organization to join the list of the populars. “It didn’t seem ethical to me to combine both,” she explained.
1.- José Vegara Dura
2.- Agustina Rodríguez Navarro
3.- Victor Valverde Saez
4.- Matías Ruiz Peñalver
5.- Rocío Ortuño Cartagena
6.- Monica Pastor Happy
7.- Vicente Pina López – INDEPENDENT
8.- Víctor Manuel Sigüenza Riquelme
9.- Noelia Grao López
10.- Irene Celdran Ruiz
11.- Raúl Fernández Campillo
12.- Maria Pilar Fabregat Baeza
13.- Pablo Lorenzo Bregante
14.- Antonio Cerdán Erades – INDEPENDENT
15.- Nuria Masip Rubio
16.- Clemente Martínez Pardo
17.- Blanca Angel Lucas
18.- Sonia Huertas Roca
19.- Carlos Rocamora Belmonte
20.- Andrei Donate Abellán
21.- Pablo Onate Gil
22.- Maria Veronica Soto Sarabia
23.- Quentin Ghislain Botelberge
24.- José Manuel Simón Vegara
25.- Marina Pintado Garcia
Substitute 1.- José Manuel Pastor Navarro
Substitute 2.- Tsanislava Stanislavova Hristova
Substitute 3.- Manuel García Andrés
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