If the PP were a listed company, its shareholders would be in despair seeing how his titles collapsed and his assets, sometimes the result of speculation but others accumulated with the savings of a lifetime, evaporated; the director of marketing has communications blocked from her; the general director would have ceased; and as for the CEO, the main investors would already be sitting with him negotiating his departure. It is true that the example is very hackneyed: one of the popular leaders with whom I have had the opportunity to speak rightly reproached him for resorting to such an obvious image. But it’s not me, but the PP of a lifetime, the one who has always looked for that of the big companies as an operating paradigm. And a party, certainly, is not.
Apply the manual. It is the only thing left for the PP, if he manages to calm downin the face of what some have rightly defined as live suicide, which is what has happened this week with the bloody outbreak of war between its national president, Paul Marriedand the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso. Everything that happened around both is not new in that game. We have already seen in the past how an ‘outsider’ (Hernández Mancha) took over the presidency and was later removed from it. We also saw, not one, but two presidents of the community of Madrid (Ignacio González and Cristina Cifuentes) fall into trouble, Leakage of dossiers or outright corruption confirmed by the courts. We even saw how a president of Madrid (Esperanza Aguirre) endangered the stability of the party in order to move the chair of a leader whom they considered “lukewarm” (Rajoy). What we had not seen so far is that all the phenomena occur together: that a president of Madrid about whom suspicion of (at least) irregular conduct has spread, disputes the leadership of a national president whose ability to lead the party to victory is questioned by most of its leaders and, what is worse, by the militancy. And much less that both, chips of the same wood, children with guns, settle their fight in the light of all the lights and without any brake, runaway. That is what gives a different dimension, catastrophic, to what until now had been a genetic malformation incorporated into the DNA of the PP, which had adapted to living with this constant struggle between those who sit in the Puerta del Sol and those who have their offices on Calle de Génova, provided that the latter does not also have a house in Moncloa. That the only one that profits from all this is the illiberal far right of Vox is another obvious thing. But it is what elevates the astracanada to a national drama whose resolution concerns us all.
The Art of War
And what does that crisis manual say, that treatise on the art of war, to which I referred earlier? That if the PP wants to plug the wound from which it is bleeding to death, none of the contenders can win or the one that will lose will be the party. What does it mean? That the popular ones will have to sacrifice the general secretary of the party, Teodoro García Egea, reduce Ayuso and relieve Casado. There are not many more exits.
There is a confusion that is soaking militants and leaders of the PP, and even the media. That of assessing what happens in terms of good and bad. As far as affiliates are concerned, it’s normal. But the leaders can have broader visions. And journalists, greater awareness of what our work is. A company whose owner is a close friend of Ayuso managed in exceptional circumstances a contract “by finger” of the government chaired by Ayuso for which a brother of Ayuso received money, no matter what or how much. And the national leadership of the PP headed by Casado did not denounce the case when they heard about it, but instead tried to use it in their internal fight in the first instance. Here there are neither good nor bad, but facts that must be investigated and political decisions that have led to the greatest public disembowelment that a party has suffered in democratic history.
As much blood as has flowed, it is impossible not to leave any dead along the way. The head of the secretary general, Teodoro García Egeaseems difficult to save, since the mismanagement of this vaudeville is evident. García Egea, moreover, has handled the game with an iron fist. It will be said that it is up to the person who is responsible for controlling the organization. But if we take that for granted, we will also have to take the risks that it entails. Whoever works as a lord of gallows and knife must have internalized that sooner or later he will succumb in the same way.
The problem for Casado is that, by dropping his aide-de-camp, his days will be numbered. He will lose not only the instrument through which he wields his power, but also any shred of authority. It happens, however, that what Casado no longer has is the respect of his own colleagues. They doubted him almost from the beginning, the trigger of the elections in Castilla y León put him in the trigger and the outbreak of the war with Ayuso has finished it off. At this point, the question is no longer whether he is right or wrong in denouncing Ayuso’s behavior in the extremely harsh terms with which he has done so. The thing is that the PP ‘nomenklatura’ already considered for a long time that he was not the leader capable of leading the party to electoral victory against Sánchezand what has happened now has convinced most that you have to change horses even if they are in the middle of the race.
Decorum and prevention
But Ayuso cannot appear at the end of this as the winner either.. Because too many suspicions fall on the president of Madrid. Because she manages the scenery like no one else, and that makes her worthy of the fervor of militancy, but those who lead the PP know of her limited capacity. And because they cannot accept the precedent of a baroness (or a baron another day) mounting a mutiny and managing to topple the leadership of a party that, if she allowed it, would become ungovernable.
Related news
In political terms, the PP cannot harass Ayuso, much less do without her, who won the presidency of the community of Madrid with a result more typical of the best times of bipartisanship than of the current ones. But he has no choice but to encapsulate it: limit it to her territory, without satisfying his ambitions or those of his advisers. To maintain a minimum of order and concert. For decorum. But also for prevention.
Outstanding party leaders are in that operation. Bearing in mind that only one of them, the Galician Feijóo, is capable of putting it into practice. Resignation of García Egea, withdrawal of Ayuso to his barracks and replacement of Casado in a unity congress from which Feijóo was elected president, although the name of who will lead the PP candidacy in the next general elections is not decided for now. The president of Galicia pushes with his declarations in this sense, although as usual in him, he leaves all the possibilities open for the moment.