The end of this political course could not have been worse and more eventful for Vox. The far-right party closes the blind after seeing how it suffers a notable decline in the polls and, at the same time, trying to digest the unexpected news that Macarena Olona leaves politics “for medical reasons”, according to the version of the deputy herself . Its president, Santiago Abascal, has decided not to show his face to take political stock before leaving on vacation, and has opted to launch a canned video with a solemn message to all Spaniards.
Macarena Olona, from aspiring to the presidency of the Andalusian Government to saying goodbye to politics in a month
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The last CIS, as well as other surveys, show worrying data for those of Abascal. According to this survey, Vox has gone from shooting up to 16.5% in the last two barometers to leaving four and a half points in just one month. Right now, the party would get 12% of the vote, three less than in the 2019 elections, and one of its worst estimates from the CIS. In addition, Abascal himself repeats once again as the worst rated political leader with a score of 2.78.
According to the Simple Lógica survey for elDiario.es, Vox has fallen five and a half points from just a month ago, after having reached 19.6% in June. In addition, their voters have ceased to be the most faithful. Right now, the far-right formation would get worse results than in the 2019 generals.
The poor results achieved by Olona in Andalusia on 19J had already triggered internal alarms. There her aspirations were to be part of the Government and that the deputy for Granada, who reluctantly left her comfort zone in Congress to attend those regional ones, became vice president of the Executive of Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla in an operation similar to the one that they had managed to close shortly before in Castilla y León with the PP of Alfonso Fernández Mañueco.
The reality is that while in Castilla y León Vox managed to capitalize on the precipitous decline of Ciudadanos, whose electorate preferred to support the extreme right brand rather than that of a very worn-out PP after more than three decades in government, that effect did not materialize in Andalusia. where the announced “Macarenazo” meant adding only two more deputies of the 12 it had, without being able to enter the Board to govern, as Olona aspired, due to the absolute majority achieved by the PP.
The surprising departure of Olona, who has conveyed her intention to rejoin her old job as a State attorney as soon as possible, has caused a huge surprise and impression among her party colleagues, the vast majority of whom have found out about the news by read the statement that she herself uploaded to the networks. “I managed to conclude the last Andalusian electoral campaign, and I want to thank the entire party for making it possible, adapting to my needs, protecting my privacy. I thought that my will alone would be enough, but health does not understand commitments, and now I must face an important personal challenge, by medical prescription, incompatible with the media exposure and dedication that Andalusia deserves and would demand, in my new responsibility”, he reveals. at his farewell.
Shortly after the news was known, Santiago Abascal dedicated some affectionate words to him from his Twitter profile. “I can only have words of gratitude for Macarena Olona. I am sure that the great service she has provided to Vox and Spain is nothing compared to the one she will provide in the future. In this house, which is hers, she will always have the doors open. See you forever.” Also other leaders, not only from Vox but from several rival parties -among them, Moreno Bonilla himself- were sending her messages to fire her and wish her luck.
The truth is that few know what those “health reasons” are that force him to retire. The only comments made by some of the people in her party with whom this newsroom has been able to speak is that lately they saw her “very thin”. But it was no secret that her relations with some leaders of the party leadership were not good. In the Andalusian campaign she showed that she preferred to go it alone.
A candidacy surrounded by controversy from the beginning
His candidacy for the Junta de Andalucía, which was closed at the last moment and with little enthusiasm on his part, was surrounded by controversy from the beginning as he had to register in Salobreña (Granada) to be able to attend those regional ones. She was then accused of being a ‘parachutist’, of not having set foot in the aforementioned coastal town of Granada, of going as a dragging candidate, and of ignoring the real problems of the Andalusians, despite having a seat for the Granada constituency. After her poor results, rumors began to spread that she would soon throw in the towel.
However, Olona defended himself and said on several occasions that his commitment to Andalusia was “total and absolute” and that he intended to remain in his seat of autonomy. An affirmation that he reiterated when it was published that Abascal would have promised to recover her so that she would return to national politics in the next general elections. Olona insisted that it was not true and said that his plans were to focus on his new job in Andalusia to exercise a strong opposition to both the new PP government and the PSOE. She also denied that she was preparing an operation to be appointed Vox senator by the Andalusian Parliament, a position that has fallen to María José Rodríguez de Millán from Córdoba.
Olona was appointed spokesperson for her Andalusian parliamentary group and was forced to leave her act as a deputy in Congress since both tasks, by law, are incompatible.
Although during the campaign he had assured that his group was not going to abstain from Moreno Bonilla’s investiture, in the end he changed his mind and last week, during that debate, Vox decided to do so while Olona held out his hand to the Chief Executive to help him, with the condition that he moved away from the left.
That was not his last public appearance. Olona attended the journalists this Wednesday to criticize the leaders of the PSOE for defending Chaves and Griñán after the Supreme Court’s ruling on the ERE case, and opining that his colleagues “only lacked to qualify the two ex-president of the Board of Robin Hood”. Two days later she announced her withdrawal and her desire to resume her profession as a State attorney, causing great confusion.
Vox will not wait until the end to reveal its candidates
The negative experience in Andalusia has made the leadership of the party reflect, which has decided to accelerate the times and not wait until the last moment, as it has done until now, for the proclamation of candidates for the double municipal and regional appointment. Their names will be known months before so that they have time to make a long pre-campaign. This was announced by Abascal in an interview on the program Es la Mañana de Federico, on EsRadio, where he recognized that this change in strategy was better because that way the candidates “will have time to make themselves known and campaign.” As Vox has suspended the primaries, it will be Abascal himself who will propose the names of the headliners to the National Executive Committee (CEN) before the end of the year.
Faced with this new and unflattering panorama, Abascal decided this week not to call a press conference to submit to questions from journalists, and last Monday, the day of Santiago Apostol, his name day and holiday for being the patron saint of Spain, he raised a triumphant video to social networks in which he made his particular balance of the political course with a staging that seems to emulate the institutional speeches of the king himself or the president of a high state institution. Sitting in his office at the national headquarters of Vox, with the Spanish flag in the background, the leader of Vox addresses the Spaniards in a solemn tone and for about eight minutes he reels off what has been done in these months by his party and advances the laws that he intends to “repeal unceremoniously” when he has “sufficient majority” to govern Spain, an ambition that he is convinced will sooner rather than later become a reality. In his target is what is known as the Trans law and the Democratic Memory law, two “liberticidal” regulations that, as soon as they are definitively approved by the Courts, have advanced that they will appeal them before “the pertinent instances” and, later, will “repeal” them. .
In his speech, Abascal addresses the Spaniards to lament that “although some try to hide it with their crude propaganda, the situation that the social majority of our country deals with is really dramatic.” “The Spaniards do not make ends meet,” he says worried. And the panorama that he paints next is bleak: “Fiscal looting suffered fundamentally by the middle and popular classes”; “degradation of neighborhoods”; “insecurity in the streets”; “depopulation”; “Crisis of the primary sector”, or “deindustrialization”, assuring that this whole situation “is not the result of chance, there are culprits”: Sánchez and his partners. “Spaniards suffer from a government that is alien to their daily concerns,” he says, also blaming “the media and the unions they bought, the bosses, the lobby energy companies and some banks”. Then, he reviews all the resources that his party has presented against some of the government measures, such as the decrees of the states of alarm in the pandemic, or “against the law that prohibits praying in the vicinity of abortion centers” .
The leader of Vox does not forget Castilla y León, where they have closed a coalition government with the PP and where he says that in these few months they have already achieved many improvements for citizens. However, he tiptoes over Andalusia, since there the ‘macarenazo’ that they proclaimed so much resulted in the end in the loss of nearly 400,000 votes compared to the general elections of 10N 2019.
In his farewell to the course, the leader of Vox warns that they are going to continue “fighting the battle” in all those places where “freedom, national unity and prosperity” are threatened, while boasting that his party has acted ” as the only and true opposition” against the Government of Sánchez, denouncing his policies as those that open the door to illegal immigration.
Aware that his destiny is linked to that of the PP -the only party with which he will be able to agree-, Abascal extended his hand to Alberto Núñez Feijóo last week and summoned him to hold a meeting to discuss the possibility of joining forces and “offer a real alternative to sanchismo” and “not a simple replacement” after the next general elections.
As he acknowledged in another interview, this time on Telecinco’s Ana Rosa program, he has not yet exchanged a word with the new leader of the PP, despite the fact that Feijóo attended Congress in person on the day of the debate on the state of the Nation – in which he could not intervene as he was not a deputy-, but he has insisted that he is willing to close a meeting “when Feijóo thinks so”.
“The important thing is that when the Spanish vote, they know that there are people willing to offer an alternative, not a simple replacement, and I think that is what we will have to talk about in the future, and what are the things that are they are going to change in Spain,” said Abascal, who had already said: “I don’t want to confuse people. I want the PP to be clear when repealing the legislation of the left”.
What remains to be seen is how far the new leader of the PP is willing to go in these possible pacts with him and in the repeal of what the head of the extreme right calls “extremist legislative crap.”
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