Ciudadanos has released a new leadership this Friday after the battle that it has experienced in a tense primaries that have given victory to the official candidacy sponsored by the party leader, Inés Arrimadas, and that has confirmed the bicephaly with which it will be governed from from now on training, fleeing from ‘hyper-leaderships’. The coordinator of the Balearic Islands, Patricia Guasp, will be the political spokesperson, and MEP Adrián Vazquez will act as general secretary of the Steering Committee. Both have appeared for the first time, very smiling, at the party headquarters, to certify their victory and send some messages to the loser, Edmundo Bal, who, as soon as he knew the results, called for “integration” and “changes” in the direction of Ciudadanos.
The primaries leave Ciudadanos divided and with the challenge of surviving in 2023
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The first thing remains to be seen, since next week the first meeting of the Executive is called and it will be then when the appointments will be made in the parliamentary group of which Bal has been deputy spokesperson until now, a position that they will ask him to leave given the breach of trust generated between him and Arrimadas, who will continue to hold the spokesperson in Congress. “Arrimadas will continue because he is a benchmark whose work has not been questioned during the re-foundation” said Guasp.
However, they have not wanted to anticipate the role that they will assign to the State lawyer, to whom he has thrown some taunts, such as remembering that all the members of the Permanent Committee “in a gesture that honors them, they stepped aside” in these primaries , “except Edmundo Bal”. Despite everything, the new spokesperson for Ciudadanos wants to trust that the good intentions of her rival have been “true”, who, as soon as she knew the results, called “to all work together and row.”
“Citizens cannot leave with a preferred partner”
But with respect to the second, the political strategy, it seems that something is going to move. Despite the fact that Guasp has ruled that her candidacy has been “an unappealable victory that ratifies our roadmap”, the new political spokesperson has recognized as “an error” having kept the PP as a “preferred partner”. According to her, she has affirmed, “Ciudadanos cannot start with a preferred partner” in the next electoral appointments because it is a party that wants to “break the ideological blocks”. “We are the only party that can represent an alternative,” she added. In this sense, she has assured that the new leadership is not going to give guidelines, nor to put “red lines” as Albert Rivera did in the crucial legislature of 2019, to “veto” the PSOE or any other party. Guasp has advanced that when the time comes, each candidate will have a free hand to decide, together with the regional leadership, the post-election pacts, but always “based on our program.”
Pension pact and centralize health, its first proposals
The PP is already keeping a watchful eye and its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has once again opened the doors to the main leaders of Ciudadanos, such as Arrimadas herself or Begoña Villacís, so that they join their ranks, something that both reject, like Bal.
“Today is the first day of the new Ciudadanos. We begin a new stage with a renewed team, which will be ratified by the affiliates starting tomorrow [en la Asamblea Genrral que celebrará el partido en Madrid], with new faces, great enthusiasm and new talent. Now it is time to live up to not only all our affiliates but also all Spaniards who have to know that Ciudadanos is here with an exciting reformist agenda”, both Guaps and Adrián Vázquez have sentenced, who has been in charge of answering everything. regarding organic issues.
To begin with, he has announced that in the Assembly this weekend there will be representatives of Emmanuel Macron’s party and also a delegation from the group of European liberals, Renew Europe, which includes Ciudadanos. But he has also advanced that one of the things that is going to be modified, through amendments to the statutes, is the incompatibility of the general secretaries to hold public office. Vázquez is an MEP and with the current rules he would have to give up his seat and his salary, which exceeds seven thousand euros per month. Regarding the brand and the logo of the group -which has already been presented as “Liberales” for more than a year- he has stated that they are issues that “are still being closed”, “those fringes, if it happens, will be seen on Sunday” .
The first proposal that they will launch “will be to promote an intergenerational pact to guarantee the pensions of our elders and the welfare state to ensure the future of young people.” They will also propose “centralizing powers in Health”. They have also advanced that in the first week of February the primaries will begin to elect the regional coordinators.
