Resignation, manager and extraordinary congress. The PSOE candidate for the Extremaduran elections and leader of the Extremaduran socialists has already presented his resignation to the regional leadership this afternoon, in a meeting attended by the former president of the Board Juan Carlos Rodríguez lbarra, who, without being a member of the Executive, has attended as a guest and asked his colleagues to facilitate the investiture of María Guardiola.
Gallardo has accused his co-religionists of buying into the right-wing framework, something that some have flatly rejected, while at the same time they have accused the former secretary general of playing a “victimist” role. In these terms, Alfonso Beltrán, deputy for Cáceres, stated that the line to be followed by the party will correspond to the manager until the congress is held, and not to the former president of the Board, in absolute disapproval of the abstention that Ibarra requested.
The president of the Provincial Council of Cáceres, Miguel Ángel Morales, spoke along the same lines in a tense meeting of the Executive, for whom it is “an infamy that the secretary general doubts the honorability of his colleagues.” He has also rejected the times, alluding to those of Ibarra, in which the managements “added and removed candidates at will.”
Álvaro Sánchez Cotrina, provincial secretary of Cáceres, joined in the resounding no to Ibarra’s proposal. He recalled that nearly 100,000 socialist voters have stayed at home and considered that letting the most voted list govern would be equal to “trampling on the recent memory of Guillermo Fernández Vara”, who, being the most voted list, could not govern due to the PP-Vox agreement in 2023.
The polls had already been warning the PSOE in Extremadura that the candidate with it running in the 21D elections was not the best option to take the Government from the Junta from María Guardiola, but even the result was worse than expected, since the socialists scored a historic low, after losing more than 100,000 votes and 10 seats and remaining on 25% of the ballots. Until now, the PSOE had never dropped below 39% of the vote and only in one election, those of 2011, had it not been the leading political force.
“The result of the PSOE is very bad, without palliatives,” said Gallardo himself when evaluating the results, even before the total scrutiny was completed on Sunday night. The PSOE has been the second force, far from the 29 deputies added by the PP, winner of the night in number of votes. And, although after the count, Gallardo did not confirm whether he would resign or not, he did urgently convene the party’s regional Executive for this afternoon at 5:00 p.m., where he finally presented his resignation, which he attributed yes to the “unmitigated bad” results. Even so, he has had reproaches for some of his colleagues, whom he has accused of “assuming the right-wing framework” for months and accepting as good what he considers “a false complaint”, in reference to his prosecution for the hiring of Pedro Sánchez’s brother in the Badajoz council.
The PSOE of Extremadura will now be led by a manager, whose composition is not known at the moment, until the holding of an extraordinary congress that has been agreed upon with the federal leadership and the Secretary of Organization, Rebeca Torró and which will be held as soon as possible. The provincial executive of Cáceres, meeting on Monday morning, also demanded that Gallardo not collect the deputy’s certificate and that with him all his organic positions and other personnel assigned to his leadership cease. Late this Monday, in an appearance before the media after having resigned, Gallardo confirmed that he will collect his certificate of regional deputy because not doing so would be “betraying the voters.” He will thus enjoy the status of a certified person before the courts.
In an election marked by the accusation of Gallardo in the investigation into the hiring of Pedro Sánchez’s brother when he presided over the Badajoz Provincial Council, the electorate has turned its back on the socialist candidate. Furthermore, it so happened that for the first time a leader of the list attended an electoral event while being prosecuted for alleged crimes of influence peddling and administrative prevarication. Ferraz handled qualitative results that placed his candidate below the brand and Pedro Sánchez himself. So much so that what the scrutiny data show is that around 45% of the voters that the PSOE added in 2023 stayed at home.
“What worries me the least is my political future, what worries me most is that the PSOE makes the best decision, that is why I have called the executive and we will be able to analyze. Above Miguel Ángel Gallardo is the PSOE of Extremadura, starting tomorrow we will talk,” he said on Sunday, leaving open the door to his departure from a leadership that was questioned from the beginning, despite the fact that the leader of the Extremaduran socialists won two primary elections over other candidates promoted from Madrid. However, one of the reproaches made to the former leader of the Extremaduran socialists is that he now asks for loyalty from his colleagues when he was the first to demand that Fernández Vara, in 2023, and while still acting president, leave.
Source: www.eldiario.es
