Neither the scandals that have recently led former regional presidents of the PP –one of them will sit on the bench for various crimes and the other has been sentenced to jail for prevarication–, nor the pact with Ciudadanos and Vox –which unleashed a real political storm that It reached the entire country – to save themselves from a motion of no confidence presented by the Socialist Party in March 2021, they have ended the leadership of the Popular Party in the Region of Murcia.
The current president of the autonomous community, the popular Fernando López Miras, does not come down from the first position and all the polls show him as the winner of the regional elections, with a comfortable victory that will even allow him to govern alone. If the forecasts come true, this would be the eighth consecutive regional government at the hands of the PP in some regional elections.
A month before the elections, the spring barometer of Cemop (Murcian Center for Public Opinion Studies) has confirmed that the popular ones move in the region in a range of between 20 and 21 seats, so they would remain close to the majority absolute, located at 23 in the regional Parliament.
The most notable crisis since the Popular Party ruled in the Region of Murcia dates from March 2021. At that time, the presidency of López Miras, who had won the San Esteban chair by agreeing with Ciudadanos, faltered. In those days, the president’s stability was blown up when a group of Ciudadanos deputies supported a motion of censure presented by the PSOE to seize power.
After three intense days of vertigo, marked by a web of conspiracies and a crisis that shook the political scene throughout Spain, Parliament rejected the motion of no confidence and guaranteed the continuity of the president. For this, the vote was negotiated with some Ciudadanos deputies and with the three Vox parliamentarians. They were all expelled from their parties.
A political episode in which the then president of the PP, Pablo Casado, and the general secretary of the formation, Teodoro GarcÃa Egea from Murcia, the main negotiator and disarticulator of the motion, were involved. Curiously, after rewarding the deputies who had supported him with some counseling, López Miras has gradually parted ways with all of them and none of those who supported him appear on the 28-M lists.
For the moment, neither this nor any circumstance have succeeded in weakening a party that could achieve a victory greater than the sum of the entire left. If it does not achieve enough seats, it is very likely that the PP will agree with Vox, but this will depend on the polls.
The PSOE, winner of the 2019 appointment, would now lose the elections, and would be left with 14-15 representatives, without options to govern, according to the polls. The head of the list, the former delegate of the Government of Spain in the Region of Murcia, José Vélez, is accused of an alleged crime of prevarication and the pull of him in the Region is little.
Podemos Izquierda Unida would only obtain three deputies and Vox, led by José Antelo, would grow to seven deputies, but it would be far from fulfilling its expectations of victory. Ciudadanos would stay out of Parliament.
The great unknown is the 27,000 voters who supported Cs in the last elections and who, according to the polls, will not vote or do not know which party to vote for. All this added to the nearly 40,000 undecided voters of the PSOE, who make up an abstentionist vote that could finally determine the seat that, on paper, dances between PP and PSOE.
The polls reveal a very significant figure: close to 40% of Murcian voters have not yet decided which candidacy they will vote for.
The winner of the regional elections must face issues such as unemployment, the main headache for Murcia. In addition, it will have to face a historical deficiency: the scarcity of water suffered by the community, marked by the drought that affects the countryside of the Region and also by the cutting of the Tajo-Segura transfer.
