Juan José Liarte (foreground) and Pascual Salvador at the Murcia Regional Assembly in February DIMA (Europa Press)
The collapse of the Vox faction in the Murcia regional assembly last week blew up both the composition of the chamber and its current workings and the stability of Fernando López Miras’ (PP) government. The already quite complex balance of power in the Autonomous Community finds itself in a bizarre situation when only seven months remain until the regional and local elections in May 2023.
The far-right faction officially disappeared this Monday after the meeting of the table that ratified the march to the mixed faction of MPs Pascual Salvador and María Isabel Campuzano announced last Friday. In Murcia, a parliamentary group must have at least three members, so these departures inevitably dragged the mixed group along with the other two parliamentarians that made up the Vox group: Juan José Liarte and Francisco Carrera. The latter occupied the second secretary of the board, a position he had to give up.
Carrera, Liarte, Campuzano and Salvador gained their seat in 2019 by running on the Vox lists, but the party ousted the top three of its ranks in June 2020 and has backed the government of Fernando López Miras since the failed censorship motion of March 2021. As In exchange for this support, Campuzano was appointed Minister of Education; Although an adviser was elected on the Vox lists in the Murcia government, Vox is not officially in the government.
The three expelled were still linked to this agreement with the PP on paper, but the relationship between them grew worse and eventually broke up. Because of this, it is now unknown if López Miras will keep his essential votes. Leaving the session at the table this Monday, Carrera made it clear to journalists that from this moment on, the public must win their support in any debate. The most important thing in view, that of the 2023 budget. “God will say it,” he said. His partner Juan José Liarte, who was also expelled from Vox although he continued to serve as the group’s spokesperson, is also losing the organic position he held in the assembly: a seat on the Speakers’ Council, which orders weekly parliamentary activities.
The only one of the four MPs elected on the Vox lists who is still formally from Vox, Pascual Salvador, announced last Friday that he would join the mixed parliamentary group and do so in accordance with the party leadership. Vox has not explained the reasons for this movement, but the truth is that when Campuzano’s march was added to Salvador’s, the consequence was that the entire group was dissolved and the Vox brand (as well as the group’s associated public funds ) are no longer controlled by the party expelled. Liarte and Carrera, near Macarena Olona, organized an event for them at the University of Murcia on September 23.
The shockwave of Vox’s implosion also reaches the rest of the mixed group, now made up of two deputies from Podemos, two from Ciudadanos, in a coexistence that promises to get complicated – the group of Cs is in the hands of four defectors of these Party allied with López Miras—the three Vox defectors and the only official representative of that party. The current spokeswoman for the mixed group was María Marín from Podemos, but now they must all agree to ratify her or appoint another spokeswoman, and the regulations state that if there is no agreement, the position will be determined in alphabetical order : it would be up to Carrera, since Campuzano would have to resign from the council to fill the spokesman.
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Strongly at odds with the other two who were expelled from Vox, the adviser issued a statement last Friday announcing her decision to move to the mixed group and underscoring her “loyalty” to the government . Local media speculated on the possibility that his march was indeed agreed by the PP and Vox regional directorate, as the President of Murcia had been seen days earlier on a terrace in the heart of Murcia with the leader of Vox in the community, José Angel Antelo. The ultra leader celebrated the dissolution of the mixed group on his social networks: “From today, no one will be able to use the Vox name in Murcia to benefit from a project loyal to Murcians and at the service of Spain,” he tweeted .
The new parliamentary composition does not make things easy for the PP. With 16 seats, the mainstream parties need seven more votes to have an absolute majority in the chamber. Four are guaranteed by the renegades of Ciudadanos and the fifth is the counselor Campuzano. They would have to maintain the support of the other two Vox exiles, but these, who have remained overnight without a party, without their own faction and without direct government involvement, can no longer guarantee this support.
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