A couple of weeks ago we gathered at the Center del Carme in Valencia a handful of citizens of various political origins to give impetus to a civic platform that supports the figure of President Ximo Puig as the guarantor of the continuity of a third consecutive government of progress It is also known that there is another platform also working for the continuity of the Botanic and both initiatives are more necessary than ever to help, if possible, the public to develop some critical thinking in the face of the approaching scenario next 28M. Polls published in recent weeks anticipate an extremely tight electoral contest. Possibly much tighter than those 40,000 votes that in 2019 tipped the balance towards the block of progressive forces since despite the consolidation of the vote of both the PSPV and fortunately CompromÃs following the withdrawal of Oltra as headliner, there is the uncertainty about the entrance of Unides-Podem to Les Corts while a notable mobilization of popular people who have even dared to play the classic base of the bullring of Cap i Casal is observed.
The Popular Party capitalizes on the bulk of the Ciudadanos vote and with the crutch of the reactionary right-wing Vox, aspires to the assault of power in the Generalitat. Of course, an aspiration pending consolidation both in the polls and in the hour of truth, after a campaign in which there was no more stellar proposal than an alleged general reduction of all taxes (up to all from some among which the Generalitat has no powers) and the old ghosts of Catalanism have come out for a walk, the delirium of a presumed process or the handshake from Madrid linking the socialists and the progressive parties with a ETA terrorist organization that has abandoned its weapons for a long dozen years. If it does not, a recurrence to the post-truth, that is to say, to the need for lies told in the best possible way in order to make them so credible that they appeal to the emotional and primary side of people without attending to criteria rational, statistical and objective as those that could be synthesized in a more than remarkable balance of the milestones achieved by the Botanic during the last two legislatures.
Because it is undeniable that the Botanic, with Puig at the helm, has achieved a handful of goals in recent years that have undoubtedly improved the living conditions of Valencians, and therefore, our state of well-being: we have the best figures of employment in years, the poverty indicators have been lowered, the prestige of the institutions has been recovered, work has been done and is being done to increase the investments of foreign companies, the ratios in education have been lowered with a greater endowment of teachers and an outstanding number of new educational centers built, a handful of improvements are planned for our Health system, we have recovered IVF as a key tool to help finance SMEs, improvements in equality, in dependence… and many, many more things from a list that would be very long. Without underestimating anyone, all these milestones and many more have been achieved by human teams where people of the most diverse sensitivities and political trajectories have often gathered and worked together, who through hardwork and rigor have been able to maximize the resources of those he had an administration suffocated by enormous debt and chronic underfunding. Apart from that, and without any doubt, President Puig has also been able to achieve outstanding social notoriety these years, as well as a positive perception of his figure across the board as an honest, pragmatic and effective in a particular situation such as the suffering from Covid or the recent and turbulent times of economic uncertainty following the conflict in Ukraine. His leadership strengthens the position of the PSPV in the electoral market because in recent years the President has had the ability to gain sympathy among a large part of the business community, liberal professionals, investors, the self-employed or many people which was located around the political center and which had grown tired of years of negligent, corrupt and sleazy management. He has shown that he is up to the task of managing and leading without significant stridency something as new and uncertain in the young Valencian democracy as a coalition government through which the most diverse and heterogeneous profiles have paraded. Ximo Puig has had the ability to make himself respected by working hard and with a high level of demand, but always attentive to the kind ways that characterize him, to become a kind of conductor of the whole conglomerate multipartite represented by the Botanic and I will maintain a certain cohesion and general balance for 8 years in which there have been no dissonances to highlight, which has an unquestionable merit that needs to be highlighted.
Joan Baldovà himself emphasized these days that Puig has been the best President that the Valencians have had and this is probably what the hundreds of people who have joined the civic platform think as well as thousands of other citizens or even supporters of political formations different from the PSPV. Seriously, there will also be many of us who will think that more things could have been done, that they could have been done better or that it is up to us to be even more vindictive with Madrid, as there will also be one or other ‘botanical’ profiles or politicians who will be more or less far removed from our most intimate ideals, but a coalition government is also a government of resignations where personal interests have to come before collectives. And these days before the elections are not days of reproach between the parties that have been partners. These are days of constructive proposals, of thinking about a future of joint collaboration and of realizing that the true enemies of the Valencians are in another, more distant and darker trench occupied by the heirs of those who ruled us for a long period of twenty years. We all know the alternative to a third Botanic that has prepared the ground conveniently for a future full of hope and it is none other than the arrival of a more reactionary and emboldened right than ever, accustomed to confrontation, to extremism and to the extremes of the newspapers; and to try, as we have seen these days, to govern at any cost, if necessary supporting itself with an extreme reactionary right, which openly speaks in interviews and meetings of recentralizing powers as one of the main programmatic proposals, which openly rejects the Statute of Autonomy that the Valencians granted us more than forty years ago and that threatens to liquidate social gains or linguistic rights that have taken so much effort to achieve. A discouraging panorama for the near future, but also for the legacy that may be left for future generations.
