Teodoro García Egea: «Vox takes more votes away from Citizens than the PP»

Fuente: El Mundo

60% of Andalusians want a change in the Board. Why has not that ever been translated into votes or foreseen by polls?
That surveys do not reflect it does not worry us. For example, in Almería the PP has always lost the polls and won the elections. The current political fragmentation is not that of 2012, when we won 50 seats, but there are objective circumstances for Juanma Moreno to have an opportunity to lead that change.
Will the result of the Andalusians redefine the hegemony in the center-right? Are they a revalidation?
No. These elections are a good thermometer, but in no way will they be absolutely meaningful for the future of the center-right.
So much presence of Casado and you in the campaign serves to counteract the weak demoscopic pull of candidate Moreno?
Now we see more in the agenda, but we have always been like that. The results will be attributable to all members.
In the survey published this Sunday by EL MUNDO, the PP falls 5.9 points and Vox obtains 5.9% (and four seats). How worried about this transfer of votes?
The PP will continue to be the majority party in Spain, and in Andalusia it is the winning option. That is what worries and occupies me. I do not think that the center-right Spaniards copy the bad strategy of the left to be divided.
Are you really not worried about Vox’s rise? Does the PP plan an answer at the end of the campaign?
In general I do not worry about any party, but the PP do things right. If we demonstrate firmness of principles and forcefulness, we will be able to unite all that is on the right of the PSOE. We do not care what Vox proposes. In fact, Vox takes more votes from Cs than from PP. What we plan is a response to Susana Díaz, Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias. This Government is selling Spain, it is a weak country that is not able to fight or for Gibraltar. When the PP focuses on what is important, the Spanish support it. That is our job and it will pay off
In the upper part of the survey, the sum of PP, Cs and Vox reaches just the absolute majority. Would the PP agree with them, in this scenario?
If that happens, it would mean that the Andalusians do not want Susana Díaz anymore. The PP does want to lead that change, because it is the only center-right party that has an alternative program. If Citizens and Vox fit into our program, we can agree with them.
The center-right voter is not sure what the PP thinks about Vox. If it does not seem like extremism, what is Vox for you: Spanish nationalism, right-wing populism?
Left not, sure. But beyond that, it is still to define what they are exactly. That is why the people who are immersed in this dance of acronyms at the end will end up choosing the PP, because it is the one that best defends the classic aspirations of that electorate.
I ask him in another way: what do you not like about Vox?
Well, your voters do not vote for the PP. And the political lack of definition. Giving easy solutions to difficult problems has a name …
Populism.
Well, that would not be the word. What I do not like is that the serious debates are frivolized. I do not say that they frivolicen, but today the only party that defends equal opportunities among all Spaniards is the PP. What I do not like about Vox is that he criticizes the PP for questions that are in our DNA: the unity of Spain, the freedom of education or the freedom of enterprise. And I do not like his lack of Europeanism.
Vox wants to dismantle the State of the autonomies and Casado has called it «making populism» …
I share your words. Let them say how and what. Services would be lost. I do not understand what is intended when there is no real proposal. We propose to thin the State. In front of great declarations, we make things happen.
The socialist Baron Emiliano García-Page bet, in an interview granted to this newspaper, by a PSOE Government supported by Cs. Have you put the cards face up?
Juan Marín and Albert Rivera did not disavow those comments from Page, so … if PSOE and Cs add, they will agree. Absolutely. Wherever it has been possible, they have always done it.
Do you regret having agreed with the Government the distribution of the General Council of the Judiciary in the way they did?
When the negotiation began we had not reached the PP leadership, and our model is the one we have presented in an amendment to the Law of the Judiciary. We want to change things.
If your model is that the judges choose each other, why did not they propose it before?
At the slightest possibility we have had, we have encouraged this to change. The government altered the process, playing with the names according to their interests. It is not normal; the judges are totally objective and independent people.
So is Judge De Prada [who wrote the harshest paragraphs of the ‘Gürtel’ ruling]?
We have already expressed our opinion about him in Congress.
They said that e would be better in the CGPJ than «putting sentences». That is not recognize the pastry? The PSOE wanted to propose this vocal and we will not act with any contraindication.If De Prada was going to be «better» without making sentences, now it will be worse because it will continue putting them? objective, is free to mark his professional career. All the judgments are appealable. The PP has already assumed its responsibility for the fiasco of the CGPJ Yes: what represents us is not the whatsapp of Cosidó, which is totally wrong, but the amendment.But Married has assumed «electoral wear and Match. «We believe that it falls within normality. If you see the internal cracks on account of the CGPJ, should the Genoa leadership reinforce its authority? Authority is won by example. Married has it to ask us to go out to the street to ask for the vote without looking more navel. Casado won the primaries with the promise to resituate the PP in its essence. Have they returned to the liberal reformist center right? The initiatives of these four months have placed us as the only purely liberal reference. The great challenge was to make the PP a recognizable party again, and we are recognized by all those people who could vote for us and left. The messages are now more forceful in taxation, immigration, independence, Gibraltar … has it been Shaken complexes the PP? Yes, it has shaken them if it was that someone had them. President Casado and I have never had them. Are you afraid that the tension of Congress will spread to the street? A man who spits in the Chamber is not worthy to continue sitting in his seat, there should be harsh sanctions. But Sanchez knows that if you spit up, in the end you end up falling in the eye. Has the PP surprised Pastor’s equidistance with respect to the terms «coup» and «fascist?» Perhaps Pastor’s statement can be understood by his role of president of Congress, but I’m going to continue calling them «coup leaders». Would you have kept in a drawer the report of the High Inspection in education about the manipulation of textbooks in Catalonia, as the previous Government did? the next day. You do not need a report to see what is necessary today, and, as soon as possible, to recover the competences of education so that they are exercised at the national level and that the autonomies only administren.What is needed 155? Longer and wider: from TV3 and the Mossos to the port system. The coup d’état is still alive in Catalonia. Torra instigates the blow. And the CUP and Arran must be cut off any type of public financing. It can not be legal a party that encourages violence. And Sanchez seems a necessary cooperator to keep the coup alive, as you just said? I think a necessary cooperator when not dismiss the president, but the state attorney [Edmundo Bal, supporter of accusing the leaders of the procés for rebellion]. Delgado has consummated his delivery to the independentistas. Has Spain wasted the clearest chance in history to achieve the cosoberanía of Gibraltar? Yes. As Sanchez does not paint anything in the EU, they ignore Spain. A party that calls itself liberal should not vote against Franco under any circumstances? Here there was not a clean slate but a Transition. The outmoded Law of Historical Memory confronts some Spaniards with others and subverts the Transition. «The ‘Kitchen’ is very much of the past and does not burden the PP» in the expectation that new cases and sentences will be known about the corruption of the PP in times past, the direction of the popular has established a sanitary cord in Genoa. The new mantra is that everything that has to do with another era is not attributable to the PP of Pablo Casado. Is the Kitchen operation the past? «The very past», answers Teodoro García Egea. And that past ballasts the new PP? «No, not much, we look at the next 40 years, not the previous ones.» The general secretary of the PP refuses to comment on the stolen papers to Bárcenas that EL MUNDO has published, which would credit box B of the PP in the treasury of Genoa and in the three great bastions of the party – Community of Madrid, Valencian Community and Galicia. «To that, as long as nobody proves otherwise, I can not give it credibility,» he stresses, before reiterating that he prefers «to look forward». «We have lived the return of Senator Pilar Barreiro, unjustly accused for two years with the complicity of Cs, who threatened us not to approve the Budgets if we did not cast her, so I do not like to enter the field of possible when they affect the honorability of people «, justifies García Egea. «We do not fear the petty maneuvers that Sánchez can plot against the PP between now and the May elections,» he adds.