Thursday, March 28

López Miras, re-elected leader of the Murcian PP between the threat of impeachment by Congress and the absence of the critical sector


Murcian President Fernando López Miras has been re-elected this afternoon as President of the Popular Party in the Region of Murcia at the 18th Autonomous Congress held at the Víctor Villegas Auditorium in the Murcian capital, which was attended by Cuca Gamarra and Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Despite the fact that Joaquín Segado, organizer of this extraordinary congress, boasted at the beginning of the meeting that “the Popular Party is the only one capable of bringing together more than a thousand people” in Murcia in mid-July, the party’s convention conservative started off on the wrong foot: Manuel Durán, a former senior party official who had been willing to dispute the presidency of the PP in the Region at first with the head of the Murcian Executive, stated in a letter addressed to the militancy that he was going to challenge this congress “in the face of the flagrant breach of the commitments made by the president of the Popular Party of the Region of Murcia, Fernando López Miras, with the rest of the candidates to preside over the party”.

Nor has Patricia Fernández, mayor of the Murcian municipality of Archena, attended the congress, who negotiated with López Miras a few weeks ago at the NH hotel in the capital to take a step back and not present her candidacy to lead the PP of the Region in favor of the “unity” of the leadership of the conservative party in the Community. “They have not complied with the agreements. They wanted to integrate only those who were less annoying to them, ”says a source close to the critical sector who did not want to identify himself.

The head of the Murcian Executive was not willing to distribute between the two main sectors of the regional PP (the one led by López Miras and the one led by the archenera Patricia Fernández) half of the members of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee, in addition to the municipal and regional lists.

One deputy secretary and two secretaries of the Board of Directors, vacant

Despite her absence, Fernández has been named one of the five members of the regional Executive Committee. “The agreement that the three of us (López Miras, Fernández and Durán) reached and, for which I withdrew my candidacy, is that the two sensitivities” of the party in the Region were going to be integrated, but in the proposal that “has come to me today they were only willing to incorporate two people from the sector of the mayor of Archena in an Executive of a total of 22”, Durán told this newspaper by phone. Also noteworthy are the two executive secretaries that have become vacant on the national Board of Directors, to which is added another position in one of the deputy secretaries, a “question that will be revealed soon,” according to the Murcian chief executive.

Durán has also indicated that “he is willing to review the party’s statutes” to clarify the situation and, if not, he is willing to “go through the contentious path.” The lawyer considers that the PP in the Region of Murcia is not “as permeable with society as it should be” and considers that “we have to recover militants and not allow Vox to have the weight that it has now”, he added.

During the closing of the Congress, Feijóo has recognized that “the history of the PP in Murcia, a success story, of exorbitant absolute majorities. For this reason, I have no hesitation in giving special thanks to the president of the Region of Murcia for five consecutive absolute majorities: Ramón Luis Valcárcel”, after recalling that he has four. “Everyone, dear Fernando, we are going to support you”, he told the Murcian president succinctly at the end of his speech. “We know that if we win, we all win and if we lose, we all lose. Let us not think that we are going to win some and lose others”, added the leader of the PP.

Núñez Feijóo has made reference to the debate on the State of the Nation, the first that Sánchez has called. In this, the leader of the national PP has stressed that “unfortunately, we have seen the Sánchez that we expected, but not the one that we would have liked to see. He was much more concerned about the state of the coalition than the nation.”

“Today I present my candidacy from the pride of knowing where we come from,” said López Miras upon going on stage, while also recognizing the work of former Murcian president Ramón Luis Valcárcel: “I will continue to learn every day from what you did, from what you do and what you want to do”. “Today I ask for your support so that the PP continues to be the best guarantee for the million and a half Murcians because everyone has a place here”, added the head of the Murcian Executive. In his final speech, the Murcian president said that he wants to win the next regional elections with an absolute majority “so as not to depend on anyone and have a moderate government.”

The vice president of the Region of Murcia, Isabel Franco, and the spokesperson for the so-called Liberal Group in the Regional Assembly, Francisco Álvarez, -fugitives from Ciudadanos- have witnessed the extraordinary congress of the regional PP from the front row. The one who has failed has been the exVox spokesman in the Murcian Parliament, Juan José Liarte, who did attend Feijóo’s visit to the Teatro Circo de Murcia last March.

Valcárcel warns López Miras

The Murcian PP has recovered for this Congress, which has been attended by around a thousand delegates, the figure of Ramón Luis Valcárcel, former president of the Region of Murcia for 20 years, currently investigated by the justice system due to the millionaire fraud of the Escombreras desalination plant . Valcárcel has emphasized hard work and the “necessary commitment” to govern. “Many things have happened and everything in a community where the ideological residue was more supported by the Socialist Party and the left, but in 1995 we changed the course of the history of the Region of Murcia”, he pointed out, claiming the five absolute majorities he obtained from that year to 2014.

During his speech, the former Murcian president launched what seemed like a warning to López Miras: “Let’s not forget that no one is essential in politics because the party is not the exclusive property of anyone, it is everyone’s heritage” along with a “divided and deified we got nothing.” He has also claimed a greater role for “older” members of the regional Popular Party. The honorary president of the PP of the Region had previously defended the candidacy of Patricia Fernández.

Cuca Gamarra, for her part, praised López Miras, because, “despite his youth”, he has been able to manage “the difficulties”. “That’s why this party is your party,” declared the general secretary of the PP. Gamarra has recognized the work that the honorary president, “reference”, according to her, has done during all the years in which he was president of the Region. “This task of Valcárcel has been known to pick up and carry out Fernando López Miras”.



The regional presidents of the PP have congratulated Fernando López Miras by video: Alfonso Fernandez Mañueco; Isabel Díaz Ayuso (from Lisbon); Feijóo’s successor in Galicia, Alfonso Rueda, who has addressed Feijóo to remind him that “you have five years ahead of me in the presidency, I have ten years ahead of you in life”, and, finally, Juanma Moreno, who reached the absolute majority in the recent Andalusian elections.

“The Region has gone, thanks to the PP, from being a caboose to a locomotive for Spain in many aspects,” said José Miguel Luengo, general secretary of the PPRM and mayor of the Murcian municipality of San Javier. Luengo has listed the problems that the Murcian Government has had to face in recent years, “such as the economic crisis or the pandemic” and has described the Government of Pedro Sánchez as “the worst Government in the history of democracy” .

The general secretary of the PP of the Region has also made reference to the failed motion of censure of the PSOE and Ciudadanos in March 2021 in the Regional Assembly, “a real botched job that resulted in the disappearance of Ciudadanos and with which the leaders of the PSOE will go, I don’t know if to a better life, but to another reality. As for the new government team of the Murcia City Council formed by a coalition of PSOE and Cs, where the other motion of censure did win, he has described it as “a house of trouble.”



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