The former secretary general of Vox Javier Ortega Smith will attend the plenary session of the City Council in Madrid this Tuesday as spokesperson for the municipal group, as announced by the councilor himself at the press conference prior to the plenary session held by all parties on the last Monday of the month. The new blow to Ortega’s table comes after the leader of the formation, Santiago Abascal, provisionally suspended him from militancy for refusing to abide by his dismissal as spokesperson in the Madrid City Council, which has led to one in the capital. Hours after Ortega’s order, Abascal has also provisionally suspended from militancy the councilors of the municipal group who supported the spokesperson, Carla Toscano and Ignacio Ansaldo, who was the first president of Vox.
In a solo intervention, without any of his other four municipal colleagues and while holding his membership card in his hand, Ortega has defended that there is no request to put his continuity as spokesperson to a vote and that no regulations “oblige” to hold said internal vote to relieve him unless requested by the majority of the councilors. “If the majority requests it, I will have no problem calling a meeting and proceeding to that vote,” he said before stating that Vox in the City Council is not divided: “It has no sides.” The election of the spokesperson is the responsibility of the municipal group, so the replacement of the former general secretary of Vox is in the hands of the party’s five councilors in the capital.
Ortega Smith sent, days before the elections in Aragon, where he harshly criticized the decision to fire him from the highest management body of Vox, of which he had been a part since its foundation and which decided last Thursday unanimously to relieve him as spokesperson of the municipal group and appoint councilor Arantxa Cabello in his place. The resolution was formally communicated to the councilors so that they could execute it, but Ortega did not accept his dismissal and continued to serve as spokesperson, which the leadership of the far-right formation interprets as an act of disobedience. This has led to the opening of the file for very serious misconduct and the precautionary suspension of militancy.
“We are a group, we work with the same identity and we work as a team as you will see tomorrow in the plenary session,” Ortega responded this Monday to questions from the media. For the moment, two of the councilors, Arantxa Cabello, called to replace him, and Fernando Martínez Vidal support the CEN decision and the party has already warned that disciplinary proceedings will be opened and membership will be suspended for those who disobey the mandate of the general direction. That’s how it has been. Vox management has also provisionally suspended membership of Toscano and Ansaldo.
“Obviously, if I didn’t have that support [del resto de ediles]there would be a majority of councilors who would be requesting that an agreement be made. As long as the majority does not consider it necessary, it does not make any sense,” he added about the vote for his dismissal as spokesperson.
The still spokesperson for Vox has indicated that the discrepancies between group members are normal and specific, which “does not mean that there is not a unity of criteria” because that unity, he stressed, “exists.”
At one point in his speech, who was one of the founders of the far-right party recalled the membership number of the Madrid councilor Ignacio Ansaldo, who supports Ortega along with Toscano, and was the first president of Vox; from Abascal, the fourth; and his, six. Then, the spokesperson held up his membership card:
― This is the Vox card. Here it says: Javier Ortega. 2014. Number 006.
Due to the lack of support in the municipal group to replace Ortega, the general secretary of the party, Ignacio Garriga, announced the dismissal of the spokesperson and the appointment of Cabello as a replacement. This transferred the final decision on the leadership of Vox in the City Council to the mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida. Almeida recalled this Friday with surprise that changing the spokesperson is the responsibility of the municipal group and that Vox cannot bear that decision. For now, Ortega will attend the plenary session this Tuesday, the second of the year, as spokesperson for Vox and with an increasingly deep rift between him and the formation he founded.
