The PSPV has not managed to avoid the battle – despite negotiations until the last breath – and three candidates will fight to replace Ximo Puig at the head of the second federation of the PSOE. The Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant, is the great favorite given her status as Pedro Sánchez's minister and yesterday in her presentation she made clear her closeness to the President of the Government: “I ask you to be brave as Pedro was. Sánchez” after the defeat of 28M, he claimed. Clearer, impossible.
However, this favoritism has not intimidated the general secretaries of Valencia, Carlos Fernández Bielsa, and Alicante, Alejandro Soler, two provincial barons who have been preparing for years the day after Puig's departure and who yesterday formalized their candidacy to lead the party. . Both claim to be the militancy candidates against the support of the outgoing regional leadership and the federal leadership for Morant.
“Militancy rules and will decide, there are no favorites; or there should be no favorites,” pointed out the mayor of Mislata who performed his performance surrounded by anonymous militants. Bielsa demanded an “autonomous project.” “The federal leadership of the PSOE has shown its impartiality, the militancy will decide,” added the deputy for Alicante who denied that his candidacy is presented as a challenge to Ferraz.
And the fact is that Soler, who has the support of a large part of those close to José Luis Ábalos, has always been “a black-legged Sanchista” – they say in the party – so until the last moment there were attempts and pressure for him to His candidacy converged with that of Minister Morant. “They were not generous,” Soler's entourage pointed out to explain the lack of agreement.
In fact, yesterday in his presentation it seemed that the leader of the PSPV in Alicante was more in tune with his counterpart in Valencia than with the minister. Although she did not want to cut bridges to possible agreements with the former mayor of Gandia, Soler did emphasize her doubts about how a minister could be focused on the day-to-day life of the party: “Anything is possible, but being a minister takes up your time.”
In a process that is heading, barring surprises, to a three-way confrontation, pacts can be decisive. At the moment, everyone claims to have good cards, so in the party they venture that the primaries are inevitable and we will have to wait for the first vote (February 25) to see what the numbers are and what type of agreements can be reached for a second one. lap.
In the middle of this process, the mayor of Mislata will go to Ferraz this Tuesday. A meeting that those around him consider to be just another meeting, taking advantage of his presence in Madrid to attend an event of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces. "If he had wanted to stop him, they would have told him sooner," the same sources point out. However, it is evident that this appointment, one day after presenting his candidacy, is not coincidental and we will have to see what message is transmitted from the federal leadership to one of the minister's rivals.
