The president of the PP in Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has decided that none of her councilors will be a municipal candidate in the May 28 elections, although at the same time she has been designing the departures of some of them from her cabinet.
If Enrique López, the head of the Justice portfolio, has decided to resign as a member of the conservative party in order to return to the world of law, Enrique Ruiz-Escudero, who is in charge of Health, has guaranteed to be nominated for a seat as senator in the next legislature.
Although no one in the PP confirms that this means that this politician leaves the Government in the event that Ayuso maintains power after the elections, everything points in that direction.
He will not repeat, and his name will be among those that the Madrid organization will transfer to Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the party leader,
"The counselor Ruiz-Escudero, who has been in the Community for the longest years, has a great projection, a great political future, we believe that his best place is therefore to continue while he takes new steps at the head of the Ministry of Health", Díaz Ayuso said this Monday at a press conference where his speech sounded like a farewell to the counselor, although he did not want to make it explicit.
“We have announced [that he is going to the Senate] to shut down any speculation.
If his future, which is decided, we leave it up in the air, there would be unnecessary rumors ”, he continued during a speech full of criticism of the Pedro Sánchez government.
And he has ruled out any change in his Executive until after the elections: “The idea is not to cause any government crisis, it is to continue having, as I promised, a stable Government until the last day.
Escudero is not only the Minister of Health who has held the position for the longest time, according to a trusted source recalls.
He is also the manager of Madrid's controversial policy in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the same one who has been facing a strike in primary care since November, the one who saw the plan to reopen extra-hospital emergencies rectified three times, and the one who has witnessed two mass demonstrations in defense of public health.
His wearing down, therefore, is openly admitted in the PP, where they do not want to speak openly about his replacement because, they say in the party, the next government must first be won at the polls.
"Madrid does not touch the European Cup before winning the final," summed up, as a joke, an interlocutor with knowledge of Ayuso's strategy.
Although Escudero flirted with trying to preside over the Assembly and was considered as a candidate for Pozuelo de Alarcón, one of the electoral strongholds of the PP, whose local party he chairs, the vice-councillor, Paloma Tejero, will finally occupy that position.
If the commitment that the PP designates him as a candidate for senator through the autonomous route is fulfilled, the Minister of Health would also be a regional deputy, for which reason he would go on Ayuso's lists, and would fulfill the objective of continuing to be registered in case the management of the pandemic ends up in the courts.
"I am very happy with that decision and I also personally thank the president for the opportunity she has given me to continue the legislative work and also at the national level," the head of Health told the media after an act at the hospital Nurse Isabel Zendal.
After the elections, the parties with the best result in the Assembly will have the right to propose a number of senators by autonomous designation proportional to their result.
The PP has five at the moment.
Of them, it is foreseeable that Ana Camins, general secretary of the party in the region during the Casado period, and a personal friend of the former president, will not continue.
The future of other councilors who did not explicitly support Ayuso in his conflict with Casado also remains up in the air: David Pérez, who is in charge of Transport and Infrastructure, and Carlos Izquierdo, the Local Administration and Digitalization councilor.
In addition, the former counselor Lola Moreno will be the candidate for the mayoralty of Majadahonda, where José Luis Álvarez Ustarroz, one of the
casadistas
who will not have continuity after imposing Ayuso on Casado in the civil war that opened the channel to the PP, does not repeat.
Thus, Díaz Ayuso now faces the delicate process that involves simultaneously drawing up the electoral lists of the PP in Madrid and the possible alignment of a hypothetical Executive.
Just in case, a source she trusts warns: Díaz Ayuso's future advisers do not have to be with her in the Assembly or the electoral list.
"We start from a situation in which nothing is given, and we have a lot of work ahead of us: we are in the opposition in 95 municipalities and we are obliged to make a great comeback", the president of the PP in Madrid has diagnosed about the elections on May 28
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