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The refoundation of Citizens starts

2022-07-04T03:46:29.257Z


The political team that coordinates the renewal of the party meets this Monday for the first time to close the fringes of the listening process


The leader of Ciudadanos, Inés Arrimadas, with the deputy spokesperson in Congress, Edmundo Bal. Jesús Hellín (Europa Press)

Six months is the period that Citizens have given themselves to complete the process of refounding the party.

A calendar that has been cut in half by the latest blow to the formation of Inés Arrimadas at the polls, going from 21 seats to none in the Andalusian elections on June 19.

After the elections, Cs has lost what was the last of the five regional governments of which it has been a part: Murcia, Madrid, Castilla y León, Melilla and Andalusia.

And the last poll of 40dB.

It gives him two deputies and 2.9%, which confirms the deep crisis that the party is going through.

By the beginning of 2023, the formation will have had to complete a process in which Arrimadas and the rest of the board will continue to lead.

political team.

Before the defeat at the polls on June 19, Ciudadanos had already laid the foundations for an "Action Plan" to resist in the Congress of Deputies next year, and whose content was in charge of a commission made up of a twenty technicians.

That commission is led by David Martínez, Arrimadas' chief of staff and a man close to Albert Rivera when he was the party's leader.

This commission has been joined by a political team coordinated by the deputy mayor of Madrid, Begoña Villacís, and whose spokesperson is Guillermo Díaz, a deputy and a trusted person of Arrimadas.

Díaz also had the task of piloting a foundation that Arrimadas announced in December, but that has not yet seen the light.

More information

Arrimadas' plan to bind power in Ciudadanos

Completing the list of the

G-8

—as they are nicknamed from the party—, the mayor of Ciudad Real, Eva Masías;

the candidate from Santa Coloma, Dimas Grajera;

MEP Adrián Vázquez;

the coordinator of the Balearic Islands, Patricia Guasp;

the deputy and head of the Economic area, María Muñoz, and the councilor of the Madrid City Council, Mariano Fuentes.

The eight leaders have signed a confidentiality agreement that prevents other members of the Executive from knowing the true content of the refoundation plan and which led to a tense meeting on Monday, when Arrimadas presented his roadmap at the party's headquarters.

And a week later, this Monday, the first official date of this team arrives, which meets for the first time in Madrid to move from words to action.

The organization is going to develop a "listening process" in which it intends to draw on the proposals and demands of the members and the organic positions.

Proposals can range from a name change to that of the board.

In this sense, there are two other conclaves already set for July 16 and 23 in Madrid, in which municipal, provincial and regional officials will meet to share new ideas and proposals.

Strengthen local bases.

Another of the dates marked on the calendar is July 15.

That day, the mayors and deputy mayors of Cs are called to a large municipal conclave in Paracuellos del Jarama (26,235, Madrid), where Ciudadanos managed to be the most voted force in the 2019 municipal elections with 23.54% of the votes and a total of 2,621 ballots.

With the departure of Cs from the regional governments and with nine deputies in Congress, the around 2,800 councilors that the party retains represent the main muscle of the organization.

The last local elections were on May 26, 2019, a month after Ciudadanos won 57 deputies in the general elections and before the electoral repetition – when Cs collapsed to 10 seats and the then leader, Albert Rivera, resigned .

Today,

In addition, the bases had demanded from the leadership a greater decentralization in decision-making and encourage communication from the bottom up.

Miguel Moreno, mayor of Porcuna (Jaén) and one of the councilors who spoke on Monday at the conclave that was held in Madrid, expressly asked for more autonomy for the party's provincial officials and greater speed in the phases of the process.

The mayor of Jaen will also participate in the act of July 15.

The celebration of this event was already planned before promoting the refoundation process, but now it takes on special relevance.

Villacís, deputy mayor and also coordinator of the refoundation team, will also be in Paracuellos.

01:04

Arrimadas assures that the party is "more united than ever"

Arrimadas presents the roadmap to the executive committee on Monday. Video: Epv

The party wants to have the candidates for next year's local elections by the middle or end of September.

The strategy of the leadership is that the pull of aldermen like Moreno -one of the most voted in Spain-, revives, from their municipalities, the "punished" brand of Citizens.

After losing mayorships as important as Granada —a little over a year ago, due to internal tensions— Cs still maintains the baton of City Councils such as Ciudad Real or Badajoz.

Also that of Linares (Jaén), after paralyzing, in extremis, the motion of censure against its mayor on June 24.

We are going to do the greatest exercise of participation of the militancy of any political party”

Inés Arrimadas, president of Ciudadanos

Five working groups.

In parallel, five working groups will coordinate the proposals that the militants want to contribute to the organization.

According to the party's website, Cs has around 17,000 members.

But this data has not been updated for months.

According to the annual accounts of the training, the real number is around 10,000.

We are going to carry out the greatest exercise of participation of the militancy of any political party, open to all militants to make proposals for renewal, both programmatic and organizational”, assured Arrimadas on Monday, who, days before, had sent a letter in the first person members inviting them to be part of a "deep" renewal.

Sources from the organization point to "a trickle" of casualties after the debacle in Andalusia.

Among the exits, that of the Andalusian senator by autonomous designation María Ponce, who on June 22 announced that she had left Ciudadanos a week earlier.

I inform you that last June 14 I formalized my withdrawal as a Cs affiliate.

I didn't want to make it public until today so as not to interfere with the #19J campaign.

Here I explain the reasons that led me to make this decision.



Thanks to those who have accompanied me on this journey pic.twitter.com/fcQ51BnkAm

– María Ponce 🇪🇸 (@mariapg1980) June 22, 2022

Independent body.

An independent body, made up of "intellectuals" and "professionals" from civil society in a "liberal agora" will also contribute reflections and proposals to the organization.

All this listening process has to be closed by mid-September to announce the conclusions, "if possible", the weekend of the 17th. It will be in the autumn to "land those proposals".

And, sooner or later, all the new postulates, including the directive, will have to be endorsed by the bases.

It will be the political team together with the technical commission that will determine when and in what form.

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Source: elparis

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