The former president of Vox in the Region of Murcia, José Ángel Antelo, denounced this Wednesday that the party has used his signature without his consent to request his dismissal as parliamentary spokesperson at the Regional Assembly Table. The national leadership of Vox forced the resignation en bloc of the party’s Provincial Executive Committee in Murcia last Thursday to force the departure of Antelo, who charged against the formation and assured that he would maintain his record as a deputy. The party has now called for his expulsion to the Mixed Group.
As Antelo explained to journalists, this Tuesday he received the “acknowledgment of receipt” from the Autonomous Chamber regarding his dismissal as parliamentary spokesperson and realized that the request was initialed with his own digital signature. “I had to look twice if it was true that they had used my digital signature without my permission, impersonating my identity. And yes, it is true. We are talking about document falsification, we are talking about extremely serious crimes,” he warned. For this reason, he indicated, his legal advisors are evaluating what measures to take.
For the moment, Antelo has informed the regional Parliament of the fraudulent use of his signature and the request has been cancelled, so the leader has continued to serve in the plenary session held this Wednesday as spokesperson for the Vox parliamentary group. At the end of the session, Rubén Martínez Alpañez, appointed by the national leadership to replace Antelo as spokesperson in the Assembly, announced to journalists that the party has requested the expulsion of the former provincial president of the parliamentary group. If he does not want to leave his deputy record, he has warned him, his destiny is to share space in the Chamber “with the communists”, since the Mixed Group is currently made up of the two Podemos-IU deputies.
Antelo had ruled out changing the group early in the morning, and had boasted of having the support of the party’s grassroots. “We must remember that I ran for the elections in the Region of Murcia. I come from a time when the Provincial Committees were voted [de Vox] and I was lucky and fortunate that the vast majority of members supported me, I was the president [provincial de Vox] with the most votes in percentage terms in all of Spain, I have the support of society behind me. It is not like now, that the provincial presidents are put on and off with the finger of Santiago Abascal,” he stressed. He has also stuck out his chest for the 18 percent of votes that the party achieved, with him at the helm, in the 2023 elections, the highest percentage in all of Spain: “These are objective data, as are also objective data that Murcia is the province with the most members per inhabitant in all of Spain, with more implementation and with better electoral expectations,” he defended.
Martínez Alapñez, for his part, has denied that Antelo’s signature was forged. According to their explanations, the petition for the change of spokesperson was signed by the parliamentary group, and Antelo’s name automatically appeared because he was their spokesperson until that moment.
“I believe that this is neither serious nor reasonable, and it puts the leadership of the party in a situation, which must improve a lot,” said the former provincial president, who has insisted, as he already did when he gave explanations about how he was kicked out of the party, which he arrived at the hands of Javier Ortega Smith, that he is “saddened” by this internal crisis of the party. “The party leadership will have to explain why they make such a botch job and what kind of image they are giving of a party that, in theory, came to change things,” he stressed. Furthermore, he asked himself “who in their right mind would register their own dismissal” and pointed out that it can be proven that he did not make the request, since the Chamber’s computer system records from which device the digital deliveries of documents are made.
Since this crisis broke out last week, he assured, Santiago Abascal has not communicated with him or explained the reasons for his dismissal, which he attributes directly to him. “I have not had a call or a message after seven years,” he lamented, and sent a message to the national leader: “The party is not a person, the party is each and every one of its members and that must be very clear.”
In that sense, he has warned him that “someone could put themselves in the position of thinking that if this is the internal democracy that exists in the party, what will happen when he reaches the Government” “What will happen if he treats those who in theory were close to him like this? These questions really worry me. I think they may begin to worry the citizens,” he pointed out.
Antelo has insisted on his intention to continue working for the Region of Murcia “from wherever he is” and without “any type of hostility towards anyone.”
