Vox critics led by Espinosa de los Monteros and Ortega Smith demand an extraordinary party congress
Former Vox leaders led by the former spokesperson in Congress, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, released this Wednesday a manifesto against the national leadership led by Santiago Abascal in which they demand the convening of an extraordinary congress “with sufficient deadlines and clear rules.”
“It is time to open the debate on the future of Vox,” say the signatories of the manifesto, among whom are the deputy and former general secretary of the party Javier Ortega Smith, the former vice president of the party Víctor González Coello of Portugal and the former president in Murcia José Ángel Antelo, as well as the former deputies Rubén Manso, Víctor Sánchez del Real, Juan Luis Steegmann, Malena Nevado and Francisco José Contreras. Among its promoters is also the first president of Vox and councilor in Madrid, Ignacio Ansaldo; the vice mayor of Toledo for Vox, Inés Cañizares; the former leader of the party in Madrid, Rocío Monasterio; the regional representative of Catalonia Isabel Lázaro Pina; the regional deputy of Cantabria Cristóbal Palacio; and who was vice president of Mobilization Rubén Garrido.
Under the title For the opening of the project and the preparation to govern‘, the signatories of the manifesto present themselves as militants and former leaders of the party committed to Vox from its origin and assure that they make it public with the conviction that “political loyalty is to ideas, not to people.” They denounce that for years they have witnessed a process of reduction and internal impoverishment in Vox, in which there has been no attempt to formally close the project but to narrow it in practice, “concentrating decisions in very few hands, weakening the debate, eliminating counterweights and removing those who maintained their own criteria.”
“The result is a smaller party inside, less plural and less ambitious,” they say, to which they add the “departures or departures” without sufficient explanations and “by way of fait accompli” of historical leaders and profiles that have demonstrated organizational capacity and commitment to the project. To this they add the lack of self-criticism and remember that Abascal decided to leave the PP because, as he said then, there was no possibility of changing things from within as the party was “kidnapped” by the leadership.
“Today, in our case, the problem is even more basic: there is not even that minimum channel of deliberation because there are no congresses and ideas are not debated,” they emphasize and, for this reason, they demand an extraordinary congress that gives Vox back the political debate and the organizational debate necessary, they say, to prepare to govern.
They warn that without talent, teams, controls or deliberation channels there is no serious government alternative and express their concern about the existence of “a parallel network of opaque entities” in the party, as well as the changes in political orientation, among which they point out the departure of the European group ECR, chaired by the Italian Gorgia Meloni. (EFE)
