Chronicle on how a power struggle once again shocks a parliamentary group
In a bar near the Congress, a group of Cs deputies and some of his assistants used to stay for a few beers after the plenary sessions. Getting close allowed us to check that there was ‘good vibes’; they passed the time between laughs and jokes, bottles and tapas.
This was before the parliamentary speaker, Edmundo Bal, decided to take the leap and run for leadership of a formation that is not exactly going through its best moment. On the contrary: the internal debate that really eats away at liberals dances between survival and disappearance. A battle is being waged for the succession of Inés Arrimadas that has generated a unavoidable side effect in the parliamentary group.
“Edmundo is in charge here, this is from Edmundo & rdquor;, a worker from the formation in Congress commented to this journalist a few weeks ago, when the struggle had already begun. Bal is an atypical deputy because, although unleash some diatribes against the government who sometimes make the invectives of the PP languish, is capable of chatting animatedly with Jon Iñarritu, from EH Bildu; have a laugh with Gabriel Rufián, from ERC; or go to a celebration of the daily ‘Public’. And all with one so overwhelming naturalness that one can only regret the moment when the politics of the Spanish parties became a pond.
State Attorney, Edmundo Bal, 55 years old, landed in Congress because it was a signing of Albert Rivera who did not follow the path of Albert Rivera. His is not an orthodox style. Even in the language of gestures, when he speaks, he has an air between spontaneous and ‘naif’. To have spent three years on the front line, there is no shortage of milestones, including the candidacy for the Presidency of the Community of Madrid. She turned out fatally because Cs was already in the collapse. She improved at least the initial forecasts.
Bal was appointed by Inés Arrimadas as spokesperson for the group. She gave him the reins with hardly any limits. The candidate for the presidency of the party wove complicity and harmony with María Muñoz, Valencian deputy specialized in economic affairs; and with Sara Giménez and Mari Carmen Martínez, from Huesca and Jerez, respectively. One focused on social and feminist issues; the other in environmental and agricultural fields. She has also reached an understanding with Juan Ignacio López-Bas, a very discreet parliamentarian from Alicante who both his own and others speak well of. The parliamentary group is completed by Miguel Gutiérrez, José María Espejo, Guillermo Díaz and Arrimadas herself.
Outside the parliamentary day-to-day leader, the State lawyer built a compact and hard-working group, qualities that this chronicler does not say, but are those mentioned by deputies from other groups. They will like their messages or not, or the laws they promote, but it is not questioned inside or outside that Cs spends many hours working and that he always seeks to dialogue and negotiate. This is demonstrated by the support that the ‘liberals’ have given to numerous government projects, especially sectoral and technical ones. This has not been the case with the ideological ones, except for one: that of ‘only yes is yes’. Here the problems began.
The clash between Bal and Arrimadas was so loud due to the position of the group with respect to the norm, that there is no source that does not believe that this is the cause of the breakup. Rupture that, for now, has not only distanced the leader and the spokesperson, but has slipped through the cracks of the entire group.
In a parliamentary group that just two months ago he was an example of unity and camaraderie crestfallen and serious gestures now abound. Although most of his deputies have opted for Bal, the very clear positioning of Guillermo Diaz with Arrimadas he has created a huge flaw, not just a political one.
The affective abyss open is hurting a lot. After all, the deputy from Malaga is a charismatic guy among his own. No one in the congressional caucus doubts his worth, even if he is not liked. Of him stand out oratorical ingenuity and almost obsessive dedication to the subjects he is entrusted with. A fan of classic cinema and science fiction literature, he was the one who, by order of Arrimadas, assumed the position of the party when the toughest face of the coronavirus pandemic appeared in Spain. Without any health training, he began to read everything he saw on the Internet about respiratory diseases, both in Spanish and English.
Diaz He was one of the fixed ones in those ‘meetings’ of bottles and lids.
Politics and friendship: water and oil
The broken ties in the Ciudadanos group are not new. To tell the truth, it is common for affections to break when life is occupied by political activity. The problem is not making laws, agreeing on them, changing them; the problem is power. The nature of the human being…
What is happening in Ciudadanos it happened before in the PSOE. Six years ago, three friends named Pedro, Óscar and Antonio they fell out. Now they have reconciled and work together in Moncloa, neither more nor less than in the machinery of power with a capital letter. But six years ago their friendship was shattered when an internal rebellion ousted the general secretary from his post and plunged the party into one of the most virulent internal renewal processes in democracy.
One of the greatest luxuries in life is sharing your task with good, serious, capable and hard-working people like @frvalles
Everything is much easier, even the most difficult. pic.twitter.com/J3Jp2zNMsH— Oscar López Agueda (@oscarlopeztwit) December 22, 2022
A month after that federal committee of hidden ballot boxes and agitation in the street, Pedro resigned from the seat. His friends Óscar and Antonio abandoned him, or Pedro abandoned them, because subjectivity is what he has. We are talking about Pedro Sánchez, Óscar López and Antonio Hernando.
In the PP, February 2022, there was a similar internal commotion when after exploding and transcending the dog-faced confrontation they had Teodoro Garcia-Egea and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s chief of staff (in the background the case of the masks brought to Spain by the president’s brother), some deputies named Mario Garcés, Carlos Rojas or Belén Hoyo signed a document in which they requested the cessation of Egea so that the internal cracks were welded.
The three of them, plus Guillermo Mariscal, went along with Egea the promoters of a series of meetings at the restaurant “Luarqués”, close to Congress. The three of them, plus Mariscal and Egea himself, were the first to encourage Pablo Casado to fight for the leadership of a PP that Mariano Rajoy was saying goodbye to. This happened in 2018. Four years later, they came to despise the Murcian deputy.
And in United We Can, as is known, the common affections and objectives that united Pablo Iglesias, Íñigo Errejón, Carolina Bescansa or Luis Alegre were blown up. Today none of them occupies the first line of a platform they invented called “We can & rdquor ;. Since its birth, misgivings have not ceased because power struggles have not ceased. The abyss between Yolanda Díaz and Iglesias composes another faithful portrait, and obviously it has been transferred to the group of the Congress, where they live together, even without speaking in some cases, representatives related to the minister and positions in the orbit of the former vice president.
More bottles?
It was rare to see Edmundo Bal with his face down to his feet until the fight for the leadership of Ciudadanos took place. Since then, mainly December, to the group’s still spokesman he has been seen with the deviated gesture on too many occasions. They say in his environment that he has seen and heard “very dirty and mean” things & rdquor; and that, as expected, have affected him.
If he has taken the step he has taken, they comment, it is because he believes that Ciudadanos is a necessary political formation. Cannot blend in with othersthe sources argue. It has enough wickers for its own identity. Arrimadas sees it from another prism.
Behind and in front of both visions, power struggles flow. The batons of command are carried by the devil. So much so that if friendship ever reigned, it could have been a mirage.
As has been told here, friendship turns into enmity and then, who knows, back into friendship. In the PSOE they know it because his boss is accompanied by two friends to whom he denied the word. Perhaps something similar will happen in Cs and they will return to the bottles and tapas after a few weeks after long plenary sessions. It will be good for them and for those who believe that the parties are ‘Vietnam’.