In the engine room of the Palau de la Generalitat and the Popular Group in Les Corts Valencianes they are already working on how to get rid of the burden of having the aforementioned Carlos Mazón occupying seat 98 and being part of the parliamentary group. Juanfran Pérez Llorca’s team tries to consolidate, with forced marches, the figure of a president “dialogue and close”, far from the tension generated by the lies of his predecessor and, above all, very far from the disastrous management of the dana by the Valencian Government that he now presides over.
There are 16 months left for the elections and, in that time, the current head of the Consell must first convince Genoa to designate him as a candidate and then the Valencians to revalidate him in office. It will not be an easy task for a politician unknown to the vast majority.
Because Mazón is becoming, more and more, an obstacle to achieving the objective that Pérez Llorca’s team is pursuing and, furthermore, in Genoa they want him out “as soon as possible,” explains a source from the Valencian PP with a direct line to the national leadership. “We cannot have him as a deputy in Les Corts much longer because the story of the reconstruction and the approach to the victims’ associations breaks us,” reflects a member of Pérez Llorca’s team.
And the two main victims’ associations – the Associació Víctimes de la DANA 29 d’Octubre de 2024 and the Associació de Víctimes Mortals 29-O – have asked the president of the Generalitat that Carlos Mazón leave his minutes in order to normalize the situation and hold an institutional meeting. That photo with the victims’ relatives is of more interest to Pérez Llorca’s entourage than to the associations themselves.
In the Palau de la Generalitat they believe that there is still time to draw up the eviction strategy, although sources from the PP and Pérez Llorca’s team point out that it would be advisable for the situation to be resolved before the return to the parliamentary period, which conservatives and Vox have delayed until February 9. A margin of almost a month that allows us to start making moves.
Especially when the judicial siege on the former president is becoming increasingly tighter, as was evident on the day of the confrontation between the former Minister of Justice and defendant in the case, Salomé Pradas, and the former chief of staff and now advisor to the former president, José Manuel Cuenca. Pradas has already pointed out Mazón directly and the judge has summoned all of his collaborators – driver, secretary and press officer included – to testify. The former head of the Consell himself is missing, whom the judge has invited to testify voluntarily on three occasions, although she cannot force him to do so as he has no capacity.
It will not be easy to remove the Alicante politician from the Valencian Parliament, who has enough experience and capacity to resist to face his own party. He already did it on several occasions with Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The same sources assume that Carlos Mazón will not abandon the record voluntarily, since it allows him to maintain the capacity and he fears that he will end up charged. “We have contemplated that scenario, but if he closes as a band we will have to force his departure from the Popular Group and move him to the Mixed Group,” says a source from Pérez Llorca’s team. A solution that would demonstrate forcefulness and seek to break the umbilical cord that still unites the former president with his former number two in the Valencian PP.
The relationship between Pérez Llorca and Carlos Mazón cooled the same day that PP and Vox made president the first and relegated the second to the last row of the chamber. In his investiture speech, the new head of the Consell did not dedicate a single word to his predecessor and, according to what they say in the party, they have not seen each other in person since then. In addition, Pérez Llorca offered Génova the head of his chief of staff, José Manuel Cuenca, whom Mazón has placed with a lifetime salary in his office as former president.
In the engine room of the Palau they recognize the damage that the figure of Mazón inflicts on the party, since just his mention reactivates the memory of the dana catastrophe and shatters the media agenda that they want to impose.
For now, Mazón remains calm, licking the wounds of the last few months. But those around Pérez Llorca do not rule out that the former president will conspire again, a sport that he was particularly good at before arriving at the Palau. “Cuenca and Mazón loose in Alicante, with an eight-hour day, are a public danger,” they say ironically from those around the president. Furthermore, they are untouchable: the office of the former president is a prerogative that Mazón manages exclusively and in which the party has no room for maneuver.
In favor of Pérez Llorca, to comply with Génova and guarantee his own political survival, the management imposed in the Valencian Community plays. In the current leadership of the Valencian PP, all the “families” have been integrated – as Pérez Llorca himself defined them – except that of Francisco Camps, who insists on fighting through primaries for the presidency of the party.
On the contrary, an incontestable fact: the deputy record is personal and will only be left by Carlos Mazón if he so decides. It would not be the first senior official of a PP government that ends up in the Mixed Group; It already happened with former councilor Rafael Blasco. When there is nothing left to lose, judicial survival usually prevails and leads to leaving the party card on the nightstand.
It will be interesting to observe what relationship they maintain from the moment they invite the reviled Carlos Mazón and former president Camps to leave the PP in Les Corts. A clamp that is as unexpected as it is explosive could form. Jokes aside, Sonia Castedo would never allow it. With the management of the Mazón case, Pérez Llorca is risking his credibility. Internally and externally.
Source: www.eldiario.es
