What is dead cannot die, but the PSOE of Ceuta is capable of imploding twice in eight weeks. The Manager who has held the reins in the city since the end of April, where the socialists have been key since 2020 to provide stability to the Government of Juan Vivas (PP), has opened this Wednesday a disciplinary file for the expulsion of two of its six deputies in the Regional Assembly for breaking its voting discipline and supporting a modification of the City Budget that the organic leadership had agreed to reject.
Far from pacifying things, the recent departure of the until then all-encompassing socialist baron, Juan Gutiérrez, who forged a flood party to win the May 2023 elections, has ended up blowing up its organic structure and also its institutional representation. . The PSOE demands from the two rebels their minutes, which no source consulted believes they will hand over, and has accused the PP of “resorting to transfuguismo and the purchase of wills in order to continue governing as when they had an absolute majority.”
The businessman Navil Rahal, who almost recently arrived in the party was ranked number 3 in the May 2023 candidacy, and the Occupational Risk Prevention technician Fidda Mustafa, who a month ago replaced the general secretary who was ousted in mid-March in the plenary session. , have ignored the internal slogan “without any argument” according to sources close to them to vote no.
Both have supported the PP proposal despite the fact that the absence in the debate of the colleague with whom they have the most affinity (the oncologist Hanan Ahmed) and of a Vox parliamentarian would have allowed the Popular Party to also carry out the proposal without their immolation in the PSOE.
Specific support from the socialists
Vivas has governed Ceuta since 2001. Over two decades he has had up to 19 of the 25 deputies in the Assembly. The emergence of Vox left him in a minority for the first time in 2019. After a first fleeting pact with the PSOE, he spent a year supporting the extreme right. The angry reaction of, above all, the Arab-Muslim half of the local population made him refuse to repeat even at the cost of putting Genoa in trouble.
Since then the socialists have given him specific support that last summer they were on the verge of giving birth to a coalition government that Ferraz first vetoed and then the PP rejected.
So far in 2024, the president has managed to consolidate the MDyC of Fatima Hamed (now second vice president of the Plenary with a counselor’s salary) as a stable partner. Both parties have 12 deputies, one short of the absolute majority. The accelerated erosion of Juan Gutiérrez’s leadership brought out cracks in an increasingly “unreliable” PSOE, according to Vivas himself, which caused the socialist leader to fall when four of his five colleagues refused to vote with him against the municipalization of public street cleaning.
The loss of control of his Parliamentary Group led to his resignation first as a parliamentarian, on March 12, and as party leader later, on April 13. Far from ushering in a new era of unity, the preparation of the extraordinary Congress scheduled for September or October has realigned the deputies between those loyal to the Government delegate, Cristina Pérez, who will most likely run for secretary general, and part of those incorporated by Gutiérrez since the end of 2021, especially from the Muslim community, who feel ignored and marginalized.
The leader of Ceuta Ya!, Mohamed Mustafa, compared this Wednesday on his social networks what happened in Ceuta with the ‘Tamayazo’ in Madrid. “The PP has bought the Government, what a term we have ahead of us,” lamented the general secretary of the autonomist party previously allied with Podemos.
The Vivas Government has been flirting with all factions of the PSOE for months. He has done so with that of Melchor León, who in two months has gone from Gutiérrez’s dolphin (promoting him to the First Vice Presidency of the Plenary Table) to joining the rebels to end up back in the organic discipline and as president the Manager . On the other hand, he has appointed a brother of the socialist Hanan Ahmed as general director and has approached the rest of the group related to Rahal, critical of both the former secretary general and the new provisional leadership.
They denounce “tortic pressures”
The Minister of Finance of the Government of Ceuta, Kissy Chandiramani, has charged during the budget debate prior to the breakup of the Socialist Group against a PSOE whom she has drawn as a prisoner of “tortious, manipulative and malicious pressures.” “They have decided to vote no with nocturnality and treachery after abstaining from the Information Commission last Friday,” he has reproached their turn on “a file without any political nuance” that planned to dedicate almost 25 million euros to repay debt and that had, In his opinion, an “eminently social” character, since among other things it will save the hiring of some 350 workers through an Employment Plan.
During the last legislature it was Vox that lost two of its six deputies. Both became unaffiliated after conversations from a WhatsApp group were spread in which the leaders of the extreme right in the city exchanged all kinds of messages against the “Moors”, Islam or the “Four Cultures shit”. The PP never relied on them, since the PSOE and its seven deputies always provided more than enough support to approve each year’s Budgets, among other fundamental issues.
Add Comment