The president of the PP, Pablo Marriedyielded this Tuesday to internal pressure and opened to call a extraordinary congress to elect a new party leader. A national board of directors to be held next Tuesday, March 1, will be in charge of debating and voting on that proposal. The conclave can be organized, according to the statutes, from April 1. Alberto Nunez feijoonow president of the Xunta de Galicia, will probably be the one to pick up the baton.
Casado lived his longest day this Tuesday painful as head of the popular, with total pressure to resign. Every hour that passed he was left more alone. In the middle of the afternoon, he also had to accept the resignation of his general secretary, of his squire, Teodoro Garcia Egea. “I am leaving office, so that members can be given a voice (…) I am leaving office to facilitate this transition,” he told the Sixth.
“I am leaving office to facilitate this transition,” declared García Egea after submitting his resignation as secretary general
Almost all the barons, including the stalwart Fernando López-Miras (Murcia), most of the deputy secretaries of its steering committee and a good part of the deputies were abandoning their leader with statements to the media or messages on social networks. The almost unanimous demand was the urgent celebration of the congress to start a new stage.
To all the regional presidents of the party, except Isabel Diaz Ayuso (which is not), has summoned them to a meeting this Wednesday at eight in the afternoon in Genoa. García Egea believes that Casado’s objective with that appointment is to negotiate “a stability roadmap” with the barons. In the morning, he will have gone to the checking Session, where he has a question time with Pedro Sánchez, as usual. His team said Tuesday night that he will do it. He has another ahead harrowing day.
The management of the clash with the president of the Community of Madrid, who accused the national address espionage and trying blackmail herhas totally weakened, in less than a week, the leadership of the palentine politician. The PP leader put an end to his castling after seeing the dropouts drip and listen, again, to Feijóo asking him to react. “What is clear is that we cannot continue like this,” Feijoo said at an event in Pontevedra. The president of the Xunta said that Casado had to make “decisions”, just like himself, he pointed out. In his Galician style, but taking one more step every day, Feijóo opened the door to present himself at the extraordinary congress. The clamor so that, this time yes, it is decided come from within the formation and also from the businessmen, as this newspaper was able to know.
This internal process could be a triumphal walk for him after, on Sunday, Ayuso assured him that she will not give that battle. “We are all responsible for this situation. We have to rise to the occasion and make decisions, me among them,” he assured.
The understanding between Feijóo and Ayuso has been fatal for Casado. After learning about that alliance, advanced by EL PERIÓDICO on Monday at noon, the party’s collapse accelerated. The earliest deputies (Ana Belén Vázquez, Celso Delgado, Marta González and Javier Bas) posted messages on Twitter to express their desire that Casado facilitate the replacement.
At noon, Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida, mayor of Madrid, announced that he had tendered his resignation as national spokesperson of the party because they wanted to focus on the town hall. Almeida has been a collateral victim of the melee between Ayuso and Casado since, according to ‘El Mundo’, a municipal company contacted some detectives to investigate the dirty laundry of the president and her family on behalf of the national leadership.
The national spokesperson is a position of the steering committee and that was not the only resignation in that hard core. In addition to the fact that several (Ana Pastor, Elvira Rodríguez and Jaime de Olano) had already told the top leader of the Conservatives the day before that he had to take a step back, there were those who, like Almeida, left their positions. They did it Andrea Levi, president of the rights and guarantees committee, and Bethlehem Hole, president of the electoral committee. This latest resignation was especially painful for Casado. Hoyo, a personal friend of hers, was one of the people who accompanied the leader to present his endorsementsin June 2018, to be able to present themselves to those primaries.
His former chief of staff
Already in the afternoon, the requests for an urgent congress reached the leadership of the parliamentary group, of which Guillermo Mariscal is a member. This deputy along with six others (Mario Garcés, Carlos Rojas, José Ignacio Echániz, Sandra Moneo, Adolfo Suarez Illana and Pablo Hispan) signed a letter in which they also demanded the immediate dismissal of García Egea. Hispan was Casado’s chief of staff for two years.
Around five in the afternoon came the reproach on Twitter of the spokesmen appointed parliamentarians by the president: Cuca Gamarra (Congress), Xavier Maroto (Senate) and Dolors Montserrat (group of MEPs). The three remembered in their messages that they had already told him face to face that he had to set a date for an extraordinary congress.
Seeing himself cornered, Casado gave up and his team sent a brief statement announcing that it would include the agenda of the national board of directors holding that urgent conclave. His stage as leader of the PP has ended after a cascade of bad decisions that originated in his doubts about the option of giving Ayuso more power, who had been asking him for four months for a date for the PP regional congress.
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As explained by García Egea in the Sixth, when he and Casado found out that the brother of the Madrid leader, Tomás Díaz Ayuso, had enjoyed contracts finger with the Community and had won “280,000 euros” in commissions, they had the obligation to denounce the possible corruption. “As a result of this matter, the pressures for the date of the congress began,” he denounced in the interview. The national leadership has not provided evidence of this alleged illegality. According to sources from Puerta del Sol, however, everything has responded to “a campaign of defamation” of Genoa for the “political jealousy” from Casado to Ayuso.
The contracts are already in the hands of the prosecution and this matter will have its own course in a few months. That of Casado at the head of the PP, however, seems to have come to an end.