Taxation, social policy and corruption in a first Valencian debate without injuries

Debate without injuries and without a clear winner. The absence of political blood can summarize the essence of the first meeting of candidates for the presidency of the Valencian Generalitat on the first day of the official campaign before the meeting on May 28. The meeting of the posters of the PSPV-PSOE (Ximo Puig), the PP (Carlos Mazón), Compromís (Joan Baldoví), Ciudadanos (Mamen Peris), Unidas Podemos (Héctor Ilueca) and Vox (Carlos Flores) ended with a conversation crossed with many allusions to taxation, social policies, health, education, housing, the relationship with the central government and references to corruption, but without reaching levels of tension or aggressiveness that would take the actors out of their error containment and avoidance script.

Organized by Cadena Ser and held at the Nau headquarters of the Universitat de València, the debate, which lasted about an hour and a half, clearly looked like a first trial before the second round on the regional television À Punt, which is held on May 25, just three days before the appointment with the polls. With the polls pointing to a scenario of a technical tie between blocks (except for the CIS, which predicts a third final Botànic), nobody wanted to lose their nerve. Apparently, the current president of the Generalitat left the meeting without suffering major scratches before the main candidate to succeed him, the popular Mazón, who was challenged on several occasions by the orange candidate and also by Baldoví, Ilueca and even Flores , in a scenario of crossed dialogues that complicated his plan to confront face to face with Ximo Puig. The very dynamics of the format, with limited times but freedom to reply, favored this exchange, which suggests a much more tense second Puig-Mazón debate.

Taxation and the situation of the autonomous accounts monopolized the first diagnostic block. The socialist baron and the popular candidate Mazón competed with their models of tax reform. One of the hottest minutes occurred when the conservative leader promised to eliminate the inheritance tax figure, “the death tax”, he called it. “Do you know what the death tax is?” Puig replied.. “That people die for not having medicines. That is what they did at the time when they did not administer a drug that they had in their hands to patients with hepatitis C,” he stated,

Mazón, who hardly used himself fully with the weapons with which the PP is trying to wear down Puig, the Azud case or the public aid received by the company run by his brother Francis, did take advantage of his last intervention, the golden minute of farewell, to launch a taunt. “Five million people are suffering from inflation in the Valencian Community. All but one: the brother of Ximo Puig”, hit the one he described as a “delegate of sanchismo”.

In this way, the popular ones seek to match the constant references that the socialist baron is making, appealing to a choice between past and future, to the corruption cases prior to the political change of 2015, when the PP was peppered with numerous scandals that are still raging in the courts.. “We have overcome the reputational mortgage that the corruption of the PP left us, and we are better in all indicators because there is trust and credibility,” said Puig after reviewing the more than 400,000 net jobs created since 2015 or investment projects such as the Volkswagen gigafactory.

But the effectiveness of the popular discourse to return to Puig the ball of “or Gürtel or Volkswagen” was greatly diminished in the debate due to the role played by the Ciudadanos candidate. Mamen Peris sought a third space between Botànic and PP and Vox. In terms of corruption, after recalling the case of Puig's brother, he recalled the “3,800 million that the corruption of the PP cost us” and listed the investigation that the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency has opened to the Alicante Provincial Council for a justification of aid of the Chamber of Alicante that includes the salary that Mazón received or the cases that affect PP candidates in Orihuela or El Campello. “I would like to know what you mean by a regeneration proposal,” he snapped at the popular candidate.

That Peris' desire to fight for his space against PP and Vox is not viewed with bad eyes by the botanical bloc was made evident when the orange candidate, whom the polls place below the 5% bar, recognized Héctor Illueca that he did not place his party in “the unified rights” with which he permanently associated the PP and Vox in many of his interventions.

One of the unknowns of the appointment was to know the role of Vox during the debate, with its new candidate Carlos Flores. The best proof of the white glove that flew over almost the entire meeting was that none of the other applicants brought up the conviction for psychological abuse of his ex-wife that Flores had in 2002. Vox has seen how that backpack that weighs on the back of its poster has been repeatedly remembered in the debates of the Valencian Parliament.

The Constitutional Law professor, trained as a talk show host on local television, came to confront the botanical candidates on several occasions, but without the aggressive or Trumpist style that characterizes other candidates from his party. In fact, there were hardly any allusions to classic Vox topics such as abortion. Flores appealed to former Ciudadanos voters opposed “to nationalism”, to those of the PP from “when the PP still had principles” and, even, to voters disillusioned with the change that the Botànic represented. “We aspire to be the first game for the Valencians”.

In full debate in the PP on the agreements with the ultra-conservative party of Santiago Abascal, Flores reminded Mazón that the polls do not give him the absolute majority “that you only see in your wettest dreams” and reproached him for having even considered a variable geometry model with agreements with the Botànic parties. “Do you really want to negotiate with the Botanic?” he questioned.

The appointment of the botanical candidates, despite the fair play between the three, also served to demonstrate the different ideological positions that coexist within the Valencian Council. While Puig, with his presidential suit and without getting into the brawls, sold “moderation”, “stability”, private investment and good economic indicators, Illueca set himself up as a defender of the classic leftist model, proposing the intervention of the economy and the creation of “a public company for each strategic sector”, including one for supermarkets. The purple man, second vice president and Minister of Housing, has gained visibility with the housing law promoted by the Government and the announcements about the Sareb apartments, which he had been demanding

Baldoví, for his part, vindicated his baggage as the only Valencian voice in Madrid capable of being vindictive against the PSOE and the PP. The lack of “forcefulness” to demand a change in the financing model before the Government of Pedro Sánchez made Puig ugly, as he did when Mariano Rajoy was president. The Valencian candidate is managing to sustain the options of Compromís, which the polls place in results not far from those of 2019, despite the fall of what was his political leader, Mónica Oltra and the bad electoral omens that were assumed after that crisis.