Compromis offers the Socialists a pact for a motion of censure against Valencia president Carlos Mazón, but it is on hold – for now. Eugene Costello reports
Compromis offers the Socialists a pact for a motion of censure against Valencia president Carlos Mazón, but it is on hold – for now.
Compromis, the left-leaning coalition, made the offer to the Valencian Socialist Party (PSPV, Partido Socialista del Pais Valenciano) via its deputy Joan Baldoví today, Monday 18 November, according to Levante-EMV. He said that its 15 votes would support a motion of censure against Carlos Mazón if they went ahead with it. At least 20 votes are necessary for any motion to succeed.
“The reasons for presenting this motion of censure are more than just,” said the Compromís spokesman. But he added, “we have to debate in the Corts,” the parliament. This would be a “legitimate” debate because, he said, all the spokesmen at Friday’s hearing “agreed that [Mazón] is no longer legitimate to continue in the presidency of the Valencian Government”.
“We all said that Mazón had lied and disappeared from the post of command,” he added. The list of charges about Mazón’s dereliction of duty is well-documented.
Catalogue of incompetency
The Spanish national weather agency AEMET put out a red alert at 07:13am. Mazón failed to take action and even put out a tweet saying that the storm would pass by 6pm. He later deleted this tweet when it emerged that the dreadful floods were already trapping people by this time. The regional government failed to put out an alert until 20:13. It emerged that his Minister of the Interior, Salomé Pradas, had no knowledge of the ability to put out such alerts.
Mazón himself took a four-hour lunch with a female journalist at a city-centre restaurant in Valencia. This made him up to two hours late for an emergency meeting in l’Eliana. By this time, people were already losing their lives.
Will Mazón be ousted?
It is hard to say just now. Compromis need at least four votes from PSPV even to debate the motion.. The socialists are declining to back it at the moment. PSPV secretary-general Diana Morant, has said that they take this proposal “with respect and understanding”. However, she has preferred to focus on the offer that the socialists themselves made to the PP to support a new president with a “technical” and “transitional” Consell to replace Mazón.
They have said that they want to give PP national leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo a chance to consider their proposal. But they have said they do not rule out backing the Compromis motion in case of “no response or a negative response”. Now that Mazón has lost his coalition with the utra-right Vox party, he is beginning to look isolated and vulnerable.
Even with issues of parliamentary arithmetic, these are surely nail-biting times for the deeply unpopular Carlos Mazón.