Mazón spends a week with Vox to agree on a Valencian Generalitat with 10 ministries

A “powerful, serious and stable” government. This is how Carlos Mazón defined this Tuesday who will be the next Coalition Executive of the Popular Party and Vox in the Valencian Generalitat. The popular baron prepares an organization chart with a maximum of 10 ministers, two less than the Botanic, including the Presidency, of which, presumably, eight would be occupied by people appointed by the popular and two by the ultra-conservatives, with the unknown whether Vox will have a vice presidency. That is the sequence that is extracted from the “proportional” distribution to the results obtained that appears in the “principle of agreement” document signed after the meeting of just over two hours held in the Valencian Parliament. The full paper has not been made public..

The two formations have agreed to create working groups to form within a period of about a week what will be the joint program for the legislature and the management structure, as explained by Mazón in an appearance before the media in the autonomous Parliament, after finishing the round of contacts with the political groups. Gone are the intentions to govern alone expressed by Mazón in the electoral campaign and the “red lines” with Vox. “The possibilities of having a majority government when you have absolute are absolute, when you have relative possibilities they are relative,” he argued to the popular baron to justify himself.

The agreement announced in the morning surprised by its haste. Nobody expected the dialogue to take shape when there are still more than 10 days left for the constitution of the regional Parliament and the investiture could be extended even after July 23, the day of the general elections, if the PP believed it was convenient for the interests of its leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Genoa had been speculating for days about the right moment to face an inevitable agreement, because Mazón, with 40 seats, needed the support of the 13 Vox deputies to be president. The regulations of the Cortes even allowed voting to be extended until September before being forced to call new elections.

However, the veto expressed on Monday by the national spokesman of the PP, Borja Sémper, to the figure of Carlos Flores Juberías, Vox candidate and sentenced in 2002 to one year in prison for psychological abuse and harassment of his ex-wife, has precipitated the events. It is not formally recognized, but the outcome has been influenced by the timing of the preparation of Vox's candidacies for the Congress of Deputies.

We assume the responsibility of forming a government and setting up a Consell in the Generalitat Valenciana that responds to the citizen mandate and the expectations of the citizens of the Valencian Community. pic.twitter.com/H9VLvaYli2

– Carlos Mazón (@CarlosMazon40) June 13, 2023

Next Monday the deadline for presenting the lists ends, and it would not have made sense for Santiago Abascal to sacrifice the one who everyone pointed to as a possible vice president of the Generalitat without having written guarantees that Vox will access the regional Executive and participate in the management public. Vox has dropped its bishop, looking for a “dignified” exit as head of the list for Valencia, but the agreement has been secured before the elections. In other words, it manages to demonstrate that it has influence over political decisions and enters governments, thus sending the message that it aspires to repeat that scheme in the governability of Spain..

The departure of Flores also has a double reading of the future in the ranks of the PP. It not only exempts the conservatives from swallowing the toad of putting a person convicted of mistreatment in the Generalitat. It also sends to Madrid the cadre with the apparent highest political profile of Vox's regional candidacy. High popular officials did not hide the fact that Flores could become a problem if he assumed a leading role in the new Consell de Mazón as vice president. It will be necessary to see how Vox manages to sustain its own speech in the Executive so as not to suffer the hug of the bear, as in Madrid or Andalusia, and lose support in the 2027 call.

It remains to know the distribution of areas. Mazón insisted this Tuesday that it will be the last chapter of the pact. First the programmatic content will be negotiated, to later put together the architecture of the Consell. The five points of agreed joint political commitments hardly allow us to guess big measures. It is known that Mazón wants to make its debut by lowering taxes and even maximizing some such as inheritances and donations, in addition to repealing the tourist tax law approved by the Botànic. Flores also advanced that the intention is to give citizens “freedom of choice” in educational matters, which seems to point to a recovery of the two linguistic lines (Spanish and Valencian) compared to the multilingual model deployed by the Botànic, in addition to returning to the single district system in schools.

There is speculation about a possible transfer to Vox of the Agriculture and Social Policies portfolios. Some media published that Vox would also assume the Ministry of Education, the second with the largest budget in the Generalitat after Health. Sources close to the next regional president denied that there had been a decision made on the distribution of portfolios. Official sources from Vox also distanced themselves, alleging that the phase is now work on government content.. The truth is that Education, due to its relationship with teacher unions, the question of its own language and the balance between the public, subsidized and private system, is one of the most socially sensitive areas.. It would be strange if Mazón gave up command of the department without controlling the changes and risked possible political fires.. Vox has defended highly controversial educational initiatives, such as the parental PIN.

In public, Mazón maintained that the signed agreement is not yet “publishable” or “public” and maintained that the point of the negotiation is not “in the people” yet. “The distribution of chairs is the last thing”, slipped. “We are going to have the best and the best. We are going to govern for the whole world, at the height of responsibility, without prejudice and without imposed ideologies.”.

Even so, Vox numbers have begun to circulate, from Llanos Masó or José María Llanos, for the presidency of the Cortes, to José Luis Aguirre or the bullfighter Vicente Barrera for Agriculture. Also the until now parliamentary spokesperson for Vox, Ana Vega, is shaping up for a relevant position. In the same way, Miriam Turiel has entered the council pools.

The announcement of the Valencian agreement broke into the national board, where the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has spent weeks balancing the relationship with Vox, increasingly widespread in the town halls. The one in the Valencian Community has been the first closed in an autonomy. Mazón assured in his appearance that it has been a “shared process” with Feijóo and avoided making transfers to the policy of pacts of his party in the central government. “I was born in the Mediterranean,” he said on several occasions. “Feijóo has conveyed his congratulations to me for having been able to give a principle of agreement and a stable turn to the Valencian Community,” he explained..