Post by account_disabled on Feb 18, 2024 3:41:57 GMT -5
The relationship between Pío García Escudero and Mariano Rajoy has cooled since the president of the Senate recognized a payment reflected in Bárcenas' papers. At least, that is what the first PP leader feels to recognize real information about the former treasurer's agenda. It was on Wednesday, January 31 , when El País published the supposed accounting that Luis Bárcenas kept in the PP. While the party leadership held an emergency meeting in Genoa, García Escudero spoke to Javier Casqueiro , then head of El País's Nacional, at around 1 pm. The journalist asked him if he received a PP loan of five million pesetas to rehabilitate his home in Madrid that had been destroyed by an ETA attack. The president of the Senate said yes and it became the first statement by a popular leader that gave credibility to Bárcenas' papers. As ECD said , that statement did not sit well with Mariano Rajoy . The party leadership did not like him either. The words “ traitor ” and “ treason ” were heard in reference to the president of the Senate. More than a year after that controversy, Pío García Escudero considers that his relationship with Rajoy is now tense .
So what he has acknowledged to people around him, to whom he has confessed that he is “ touched .” The president of the Senate has stated that Rajoy no longer treats him in the same way as he did before and that the head of the Executive is currently colder Phone Number List towards him. Until the publication of the Bárcenas papers, Pío García Escudero was one of the President of the Government's trusted people. She talked to him often and trusted him with secrets. On the other hand, now, as he says, he no longer has the same relationship of trust with Rajoy.Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba feared that a bad result in the European Championships would provoke a rebellion by critics within the party. For this reason, just before the election of Valenciano as head of the list for these elections, he organized a dinner with all the regional barons to ask for “unity”, no matter what happens on May 25. As sources very close to the secretary general explain to El Confidencial Digital , Rubalcaba wanted to avoid, at all costs, that a defeat in the European elections would reopen the internal debate about his leadership in the party , and that some of the most critical regional barons, with Tomás Gómez at the head, will demand the holding of an extraordinary Congress and the advancement of the primaries. Thus, he decided to call all the regional leaders of the PSOE to a dinner in Ferraz, which was held just a few days before the designation of Elena Valenciano as a socialist candidate for those elections became official.
Almost all of the barons attended the Rubalcaba meeting , except Javier Fernández and Guillermo Fernández Vara, who excused themselves due to scheduling reasons. Call for “unity” until the primaries At dinner, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba told those present that his number two in Ferraz would be the head of the list for the Europeans . The announcement, explained the sources consulted, was supported by all those present, who were grateful that the election was anticipated before making it public, and "they saw Elena as the best possible candidate." Given the good climate he found, Rubalcaba asked all the regional barons for “unity” in the party, no matter what happens in the May elections. The general secretary insisted on the need to “try to generate the maximum space for consensus” between the national executive and all the party federations. Some regional barons consulted affirm that " it was feared that Tomás Gómez or Ximo Puig could demand the holding of an extraordinary Congress if the European ones went badly", but the truth is that no one said anything in that sense, and that all the regional leaders were committed to support Rubalcaba no matter what happens on March 25. To expand this information, ECD has contacted Ximo Puig, one of the barons who has been cited by his colleagues as a “critic” and defender, on other occasions, of the holding of an extraordinary Congress. The leader of the PSPV has confirmed to this newspaper that neither he nor anyone else spoke about that possibility during dinner.