The succession of scandals truncates the end of the PSOE campaign

The end of this electoral campaign is becoming a true ordeal for the PSOE in which scandals are chained without pause that are eroding the socialist brand before an electoral appointment that goes beyond the election of mayors and regional presidents. 28-M has become a duel between Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, a first round of the general elections and the Socialists are choking on scandals.

The Bildu lists, full of ETA convicts -seven of them with blood crimes- put Pedro Sánchez in trouble for the pacts and assignments to this formation throughout the entire legislature and monopolized the start of the campaign. Added to this controversy is the trickle of information, revealed by EL MUNDO, about the contracts awarded by the Valencian president, Ximo Puig, to his brother, or the irregularities in the management of renewables in Aragon. And, already in the final stretch of the campaign, the police operations against the purchase of votes that have splashed the PSOE, above all, in Mojácar (Almería), but also in Murcia, with candidates involved and arrested.

As if that were not enough, with 48 hours to go before the elections are held, a second bomb has exploded in Andalusia, the great municipal stronghold of the Socialists, where the PP challenges its hegemony, with the party's Organization Secretary there as the protagonist of a gruesome event in which a frustrated kidnapping and several suspected urban files are mixed.

A Granada judge has asked the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) to investigate the number three of the Andalusian PSOE, Noel López, whom he considers an alleged inducer of the kidnapping of a councilwoman with the intention of silencing a case of urban corruption.

The kidnapping should serve to cover urban irregularities

In an order notified this Thursday to the parties and to which EL MUNDO has had access, the magistrate points out that there are “sufficiently relevant” indications that the Organization Secretary of the Andalusian PSOE had an active participation in planning the kidnapping of the mayor Vanessa Rosemary. The kidnapper told the Civil Guard that the plan was hatched in a restaurant in Maracena, where they sit at the same table himself, who was a partner of the councilor, Berta Linares; his predecessor at the head of the Mayor's Office and number three of the Andalusian PSOE, the aforementioned Noel López, and the Councilor for Town Planning, Antonio García Leyva, in turn vice-president of the Granada Provincial Council. It was Noel López who proposed to give Romero “a scare”, with whom they had terrible relations and who, in addition, always had, according to his testimony, information from urban planning files that could cause them problems.

Likewise, according to what the kidnapper has testified, López encouraged him to carry out the plan on the grounds that he suffered from mental illness (he has bipolar disorder) and “nothing was going to happen to him” and that, if the victim reported, “they would put a lawyer.”

Sánchez accuses the PP of “muddling” and Feijóo asks him not to hide

The number three of the Andalusian PSOE yesterday “absolutely” denied any relationship with the events under investigation and tried to discredit the evidence against him, assuring that it is based on the testimony of a person “who is unbalanced.”

Meanwhile, Moncloa and Ferraz try to limit and minimize the scandals by defining them as “specific cases” and scarcely representative.. It is the idea that you want to transfer. In the party there is a division between those who do not show concern that it has a cost for the image of the PSOE because “it is a symptom that the system works”, as Luis Tudanca, from Castilla y León, explained, or those who point out in Madrid that “it does not it has to affect” beyond the affected municipalities themselves. “We are concerned that it will happen, but it will not influence our votes,” they say from the socialist machine room.

However, there is a sector of the party that shows concern that it can “demobilize”, as they believe in the PSOE of Madrid, because it generates “disaffection” by the political class. Demobilization, they point out, “always harms the left.”

The truth is that the socialist candidates try to be blunt to distance themselves from these scandals and try to avoid costing them. “It's an asshole,” said Guillermo Fernández Vara from Extremadura, who wanted to limit it to “specific events”. The Valencian Ximo Puig also spoke of “shamelessness”.

Pedro Sánchez framed yesterday the latest scandals that affect his party in an attempt by the PP to dirty the climate of 28-M: “He will not stop insulting and muddying the campaign”. Feijóo, for his part, demanded explanations and that he act “immediately”: “You cannot hide.”

Thus, the Government is committed to conveying an image that the system and the law “work”, that “if there is any irregular action, the State acts and acts effectively”. At the same time that you want to convey a “forceful” message that you are not permissive or tolerant. “We must be forceful with any behavior that questions electoral rules and legislation,” said the third vice president, Teresa Ribera.. “If someone commits an irregularity, from the electoral point of view, they have to respond administratively and criminally, because that is punished,” observed Minister Luis Planas.