The PP seeks to close the chapter of Carlos Mazón’s resignation as soon as possible and without further surprises president of the Valencian Generalitat. The investiture of Juanfran Pérez Llorca, who presented his candidacy for the presidency of the Consell on Wednesday, will be held at the latest on Friday next week, just three weeks after Mazón’s resignation. Everything has been set in motion because the agreement with Vox is practically a given, according to several PP sources, but Génova is cautious. The national management wants to ensure that the pact, still awaiting closure, does not contain new transfers to Vox. The objective is to replicate the content that Mazón closed with the formation of Santiago Abascal to approve the latest regional budget, which was already the most identified with Vox among all those created so far. The PP leadership will supervise the final text and the investiture speech of Pérez Llorca and, until it is certain that everything has gone well, will not undertake the organic replacement of Mazón in the party.
Vox has privately communicated to the PP its conditions for the investiture of Pérez Llorca, according to popular sources, and the PP considers them acceptable. Another thing is how they end up on paper, because the devil is in the details and Génova doesn’t fully trust Vox’s intentions. The PP leadership intends to avoid a greater cost than replicating, in an identical way, the content of the agreement that Mazón concluded with Santiago Abascal’s party last March to approve the Valencian budgets for 2025.
Although this was already a deal that went too far and forced the PP to reach the limit of accepting Vox’s policies. Those from Abascal forced Mazón to make a public statement in which he supported his speech, with the same words, both in the rejection of the European green pact and in the reception of migrant minors.
The Valencian baron of the PP respected the script and went out in public to “call for action against the European Green Deal”, i.e. the EU environmental policies promoted by the PP in Brussels. It also refused to welcome other migrant minors and asked the Delegation of the Government of the Valencian Community to make public the nationality of people detained for looting linked to house robberies during the dana.
Now the PP is satisfied that Pérez Llorca only has to replicate the same conditions, which the People’s Party now see as part of the ideological turn to the right that Alberto Núñez Feijóo imposed on the party in last July’s congress. On this occasion, however, the speech would have a more solemn character because Pérez Llorca would have to incorporate these declarations into his investiture speech in parliament.
In any case, the popular parties have little room for maneuver to oppose because Vox has the upper hand: the PP has 40 deputies out of a total of 99 seats in the Valencian courts (the absolute majority is 50), so it needs the support of the far-right party, which has 13 deputies.
Unlike the entire phase in which Mazón piloted the Valencian government, Génova has now taken the reins and supervises every step. The negotiation formally takes place from Valencia and is driven by the investiture candidate himself, but Feijóo is informed of everything by the candidate himself, and will give the final approval. The PP leadership acknowledges that it will also supervise Pérez Llorca’s investiture speech, so that nothing can “compromise” Feijóo’s political position.
The PP leader also ordered to postpone the organic replacement of Mazón until the investiture of Pérez Llorca has taken place. The plans of the Valencian PP included convening this Friday an executive committee and a board of directors to approve the appointments of the parliamentary group in the Valencian courts, with the possibility of taking advantage of that meeting to replace Mazón as president of the party. The formula chosen is that he resigns from the position of president and the executive committee elects Pérez Llorca as the new president of the Valencian PP, a possibility provided for by the statute in the event of the leader’s resignation, without the need to approve a leader or hold a congress.
But this replacement will not happen as soon as the Valencian PP would have liked, because Génova has given the order to wait for Pérez Llorca’s investiture next week, to prevent Vox from overthrowing him. First the institutional one and then the organic one, they say in the national leadership, whatever happens.
