Feijóo year II. Just a fortnight from now will be the first anniversary of the election of Alberto Núñez Feijóo as president of the PP, and the popular leader has expanded his team with people he trusts the most: Borja Sémper, Íñigo de la Serna , Carmen Fúnez, Álvaro Pérez, who complete the group that already left the Seville congress, which had as pillars those who accompanied him in the Galician stage at the head of the Xunta, and the politicians with whom he had a special relationship of friendship, like Esteban González Pons and Manuel Cobo.
With this team, Feijóo has fulfilled his first objective of putting the party in order, pacifying it, after the upheaval that led to the replacement of Pablo Casado, and renewing the pending structures. The aim is that the municipal and regional elections, the first at state level that Feijóo will face since the presidency of the PP, will serve as an impetus for the real test to which he will have to undergo, that of the general elections scheduled for in December, when the Galician politician plays it all or nothing. He can win and be president of the Government, but if he doesn’t make it to La Moncloa there won’t be a second chance, because Feijóo has already announced that he won’t run again.
Now, according to PP sources, the party works alone, with the management of the general secretary, Cuca Gamarra; of the general coordinator, Elías Bendodo, and of the vice-secretary of organization, Miguel Tellado, faithful defender of Feijóo, first in the Galician PP and now in the national management, which is in charge of the organic work.
With the party pacified, the president of the PP has set himself the challenge of giving an image of moderation and centrism. For this reason, he has added to the national leadership, the hard core, Borja Sémper, as spokesperson of the campaign committee and responsible for the area of ??culture, and Íñigo de la Serna, as coordinator of the electoral program for the municipal and regional elections , together with Carmen Fúnez, who assumes the vice-secretary of social policies and demographic challenges. The Catalan David Parry is also joining as secretary of electoral action, whose knowledge Feijóo highlights of the Catalan political and social reality, which the leader of the PP counts on to improve the results in the community. “It is a united, well-coordinated team, which we have strengthened”, says Feijóo.
But the popular president, as he did in Galicia, wants to go beyond his organic team. According to sources close to him, his contact with former presidents José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy is common and is based on his maxim that whoever does not respect his predecessors does not respect himself. The same goes for José Manuel Romay Beccaría, his political mentor, from whom he listens to all the advice he has to give him.
Already at the Congress in Seville, he announced the creation of an office of the president, which did not get started but has in fact worked. They are the experts to whom the leader of the PP has turned to make his programmatic proposals, which he has forwarded to Pedro Sánchez, without much success. They are the former ministers or experts who helped him make his economic plan, based on the reduction of personal income tax to compensate for the rise in inflation, or the regeneration project.
In this line is the new foundation of PP Reformisme21, launched to connect with civil society, another step in its goal of making the definitive leap that will take it to Moncloa. The PP leadership sees this goal as possible, and Feijóo also believes so, but they are cautious and do not want to sell the bear’s skin before hunting it. Good vibes come from polls. All, except the CIS, which on Friday again placed the PSOE almost five points ahead of the PP.
Feijóo is no longer pending polls. He doesn’t want excessive optimism, nor does he want anyone to rest on their laurels. There are nine months until the general elections and he wants to take advantage of them to prepare a “transversal” program. It is the way to seek votes, on the one hand, from the extreme right represented by Vox, attracting the voters of this party who do not quite understand movements such as the presentation of the motion of censure, and, on the other , to get socialist voters who do not agree with some of Sánchez’s positions, nor with his management of the latest internal crises in the Government with the Podemos ministers. Feijóo wants to put together a transversal project, with a “moderate and centered” party, which also seeks transversality.
