harmonize the multiple voices and manage the enemies

Pedro Sanchez (with which Feijóo will be seen next week) He says that he will rush the deadlines, so that, if so, the elections will be at the end of 2023. With that forecast, the conservative leader has a year and a half to settle down and extend his campaign throughout Spain. presidential image which, for now, is only insured in Galicia. The extraordinary and urgent circumstances by which he has reached the leadership of the PP, however, make his task difficult, because he assumes the leadership of the opposition without having a seat in Congress and with a list of debts incurred due to the two main alliances he made to unseat Pablo Casado. The first and strongest with Juanma Moreno (President of the Junta de Andalucía). The second, much weaker, with Isabel Diaz Ayuso (President of the Community of Madrid).

Feijóo is not a deputy, so he will miss many hours of public exposure in the noble space of the lower house to carve out his new position. To make up for that absence, he has appointed Cuca Gamarra General Secretary. She will be responsible for responding to Sánchez every Wednesday at the government control session. But due to that responsibility (to replace the boss) she will not be able to dedicate herself as she should to what a general secretary normally does, which is the party, so Feijóo has appointed Elijah Bendodo general coordinator (number 3), although he will not be able to dedicate himself full time either, because he will continue as a councilor of the Junta de Andalucía.

East Domino effect has caused the leader of the PP to have had to multiply the number of voices who will represent the party while Feijóo will not have a clear pulpit to climb on. In fact, he still has to clarify when he will leave the Xunta and if he wants to be senator by regional designation, a position that would allow him a face-to-face with Sánchez a month in the upper house. This Sunday, in addition, two more faces with a key role in the communication of the party will be known: the deputy secretary of organization, who will help Bendodo, and the national spokesperson for the formation.

“I miss a person of weight at the controls of the day to day of the game. Neither Gamarra nor Bendodo nor whoever comes below Bendodo, as deputy secretary, will be able to represent for the party what they were in their day [María Dolores] Cospedal or [Francisco] Alvarez Helmets“, a veteran former leader of the PP complained in the corridors of the Seville congress this Friday. Sources from Moreno’s team, however, emphasize that the general coordinator will reconcile his position with that of counselor at most until December, the deadline for the Andalusian elections. Later, these sources add, he will leave the Executive and will focus only on the party.

And that power that Bendodo is going to hold now, and that will grow in a few months, leads to the second important internal challenge: the management of enemies. Feijóo has handed over the general coordination to one of Moreno’s men in Andalusia and that movement is relevant in the short term (it rewards him for his support to kick Casado out) but, above all, in the long term: the leader of the PP has a plan A, which is to become president of the Government, and he has already warned Ayuso that he assumes the position “without an expiration date”, although, if he does not achieve it in 2023 nor does the result of the PP clearly improve, the Madrid leader is already seeing in these last few hours that plan B will be to boost the current president of the Board of Andalusia.

Ayuso left Feijóo free now because she knows she is touched by the scandal of the contracts that her brother signed with his government in the midst of the pandemic. If he passes the judicial investigations without blemish, he will return to the charge. Everyone knows and prepares.