2024-01-12 23:38:26
Santiago Abascal wants to leave his position tied and well tied to continue leading Vox in the complicated legislature that has just started. The top leader of the extreme right has decided to advance the National Assembly of his party, in which he will run for re-election, to January 27. Abascal is looking for a management team tailored to him in which he will keep the most loyal and incorporate new faces, dispensing with those he no longer trusts. With his decision to advance the conclave, he has deactivated Javier Ortega Smith, whose continuity in one of the three vice-presidencies that the formation now has is considered over.
Vox accounts: 64% of annual income are public subsidies and the leadership charges 500,000 euros
In this way, Abascal intends to face the next four years, which, as he has acknowledged, are going to be “very difficult for Vox and for Spain.” But also for him, since the political horizon of 2024 appears intense as it is a markedly electoral year in which there will be at least three appointments with the polls: the Galician elections – which will be held on February 18 –, the European elections in June, and the Basques, yet to be called but which could coincide with the latter. Chaining new setbacks in these next elections could jeopardize Abascal’s continuity as president of the far-right party, a position for which for the first time there were beginning to be certain internal movements that could lead to the presentation of an alternative candidacy.
However, his unexpected proposal, endorsed last Monday by the National Executive Committee (CEN), to hold an extraordinary conclave for the end of this month – when it was not officially until March – leaves potential rivals who must pick up the slack without room for maneuver. 10% support from the membership census before the 16th of this month. This requirement makes it very difficult for anyone to overshadow him in the Assembly to which the management has given “extraordinary” status.
A census reduced by half
In the accounts presented in 2022, Vox declared that it had just over 66,000 members who paid their dues, which would mean collecting about 6,600 signatures. But the figure today is no longer that. As reported by the Vox Electoral Committee, the current number of members is 66,949 members. In the information provided by the party itself, it is stated that the candidates for the Vox presidency must collect “3,269 endorsements from members with full voting rights from the Electoral Census, closed on December 31, 2023.”
It follows that although the party’s militancy has grown this year, the real census, that is, of members who are up to date with their payments, has been reduced by half, settling at 35,548 members, of which only 32,690 can grant guarantees when they have been in service for more than nine months. This will mean that if the case arises, only 53% of the militancy will be able to vote, as those who have been subject to administrative sanctions will also be excluded.
Abascal’s hasty plans have been very bad for a critical sector that has not stopped growing and has become more pronounced after the loss of 19 seats in Congress in the 23J elections, the abrupt departure of Macarena Olona and the resignation of the parliamentary spokesperson, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, an emblematic figure of Vox. Olona herself did not hesitate to relate the call of this Extraordinary Assembly with the possibility that Ortega Smith could be gathering support to challenge Abascal for the leadership of the party, whom she accuses of “eliminating all dissidence to turn Vox into a bunker.”
Other leaders in this sector interpret the leader’s movements as a sign of “weakness” and “fear” that he will be removed from his chair in March if he fails on February 18 in his attempt to enter the Galician autonomous parliament for the first time. and Vox is not “decisive” for the formation of the new government, all of this if the PP wins those elections again but does not reach the absolute majority. “It is a clear move of self-defense,” say the critical voices, who predict that the party, as almost all the polls indicate, will not be able to reach the necessary 5% of votes in Galicia this time with Álvaro’s candidacy. Díaz-Mella, the current leader of Vox in Pontevedra.
These leaders also accuse the president of Vox of having started the process by “cheating”, without immediately explaining the procedure and deadlines for the renewal of the current leadership of the party. In fact, in a letter sent to the militancy shortly after appearing at a press conference on Monday from the party’s national headquarters, Abascal himself limited himself to encouraging them to “participate” and informed them that “in a few days” they would receive information with all the details of those internal elections for which the Vox leader said he did not know if there would be other candidates apart from his. “This information should have appeared in this information letter from Abascal,” they argue. Critics even question the legality of calling the Assembly. According to their argument, “if the CEN is not dissolved previously, an extraordinary Assembly cannot be convened, and if the CEN is dissolved, candidates cannot be elected.”
The question that remains to be resolved is whether any leader of a certain weight will dare to stand up to the leader and manage to obtain the necessary 10% of support in such a short time. The most widespread feeling is that it does not seem that this will be the case, so that as happened in the previous National Assembly held in 2020, the current president of Vox will revalidate his position without problems and without even the need for a vote. Abascal will have a free hand to make a direction tailored to him in which all those consulted take it for granted that he will keep Jorge Buxadé and Ignacio Garriga, but not Ortega Smith, and will possibly incorporate Pepa Millán, the current parliamentary spokesperson, among other people. of her confidence.
In June of last year Vox held its annual ordinary Assembly in which the 2022 accounts were approved and in which the leader managed to introduce important changes in the operation of the party. Among other issues, he toughened the disciplinary regime, establishing that the General Assembly could be held “in person or by telematic means”, while “the vote will preferably be telematic to guarantee respect for the principle of democratic functioning.”
Abascal also gained great internal power by expanding the functions that the statutes already granted to the party presidency, such as expanding the number of CEN members. Although in reality the real power of the party is in the hands of the Political Action Committee (CAP), a body created by Abascal himself and made up of a small number of people, from which Espinosa ended up being excluded.
Ortega Smtih, the frustrated hope of some critics
In recent months, a not inconsiderable group of critics has been asking and encouraging the former general secretary of the party and spokesperson in the Madrid City Council, Javier Ortega Smith, to take a step forward to lead an alternative candidacy to Abascal. This Christmas, that possibility has been the ‘talk’ at the various dinners and lunches held by former public and organic officials of Vox, to which some of the current deputies of the far-right party have also joined on occasion.
The information published by Digital Freedom, the newspaper of Federico Jiménez Losantos, which pointed to this possibility, greatly bothered Abascal, whose relations with Ortega are not exactly going through a good moment. Especially since he stripped him of his stripes as general secretary to place Ignacio Garriga – a man of Jorge Buxadé’s complete confidence – in that position, displacing him to one of three vice-presidencies of the party, without great influence in internal decision-making. .
Faced with these rumors, Ortega limited himself to charging in his X account against “the objectivity and professionalism that are increasingly distant from the so-called media.” But at no time did he make a flat denial of the news.
Sadly in our beloved Spain, truth, objectivity and professionalism are increasingly distant from the so-called media. As if we didn’t have enough fighting the ETA members, the coup plotters, the communists and other ilk that… pic.twitter.com/jvnGnWcOTH
— Javier Ortega Smith (@Ortega_Smith) December 27, 2023
Few were surprised, however, that he was not entertaining that idea. Since his dismissal as number two, the Madrid leader has been very belligerent and critical of Vox’s strategy, warning after the failure of 23J that Vox could not become a placement agency,” and lamenting the causes – never told – of the unexpected departure of Espinosa de los Monteros.
Abascal’s decision to rush the National Assembly, according to some party colleagues in this newsroom, seemed “very bad” to Ortega Smith, who has complained about it in internal chats. This same Wednesday, in the corridors of the Senate, the once all-powerful leader of Vox ruled out that he would compete for Abascal’s position: “No. “It was not my intention to introduce myself,” he replied dryly when asked about it.
Hours later it emerged that the deputy spokesperson for the municipal group, Carla Toscano, left the minutes for Madrid of the Congress that she held a few months ago after the resignations of Espinosa de los Monteros and Juan Luis Steegmann. Her seat will soon be occupied by Rocío Gil de Biedma, sister of Esperanza Aguirre, former president of the Community of Madrid, as she is the next on the list. Toscano, Ortega Smith’s number two in Cibeles, will from now on focus only on City Hall.
That something is moving in Vox no longer doubts it. And not exactly for the tranquility of Abascal.
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