The PP silences Pablo Casado in his last internal intervention before the congress of his succession
The PP does not want the voice of its still president to mark the party's guidelines in the scarce month that remains at the helm of the organization. The speech that Pablo Casado will give this Tuesday before the National Board of Directors, the body that will officially convene the congress of his succession, will not be broadcast openly so that journalists or any citizen who so wishes can follow it. The decision, according to sources from Casado's environment, has been made by the two people who will temporarily assume the real direction of the party, Cuca Gamarra and Esteban González Pons, who have not yet been formally appointed general coordinator and president of the organizing committee of the conclave respectively.
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"No intervention can be followed in the open," says the PP in the information forecasts sent to journalists after eleven o'clock on Monday night. An unusual time for the party to submit its agenda for the next day. "The decision belongs to the Organizing Committee of the Congress (COC) and General Coordination," sources close to the party's still president assure.
Both charges were decided last week, at Casado's meeting with the regional barons of the party. The regional leaders, with Alberto Núñez Feijóo as successor in chest, demanded that their president leave in writing that he is not going to run for the extraordinary congress on April 2 and 3. In addition, at the proposal of Casado himself (according to the arduously negotiated statement issued in the early hours of Thursday, the current parliamentary spokesperson, Cuca Gamarra, would be appointed general coordinator, for which she would assume de facto the control of the PP in the absence of a general secretary and with the resigned president. The COC would be chaired by MEP Esteban González Pons, number 2 on the lists of the 2019 European elections, already with Casado at the head of the organization.
But the decision of the barons does not yet have statutory endorsement. The congress will not be formally convened until this noon, so there can hardly be an official organizing committee, nor can it have a president. Gamarra has not yet been appointed general coordinator either: a National Executive Committee prior to the Board of Directors will do so this morning.
Casado wanted to take advantage of his intervention on Tuesday to start his farewell to his party. Last week he already said goodbye to the Congress of Deputies with a final face-to-face with the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, in a control session. Casado didn't even rush his turn. "I understand politics based on respect for opponents and dedication to colleagues," he said, before leaving his seat seconded by his last three faithful. He looked slightly at his bench and left.
This Tuesday's was going to be his penultimate intervention, before the final closing in the congress on April 2 and 3. "The decision is not ours," they insist from Casado's environment. For now, silence has been imposed among those who have taken the reins of the party.
Gamarra has already taken the unofficial command of the party. Today's decision seems respond to dysfunctions detected last week, when the war broke out in Ukraine and it was Casado who spoke with the Prime Minister and who set the position of the PP with a single message on social networks. Gamarra immediately came out to reply and, in the afternoon, appeared before the media to insist on a message that he had already given in the morning. At the press conference he spoke of the "president of the PP", but without mentioning Casado. Nor did the name appear in the subsequent press release.
