Gabriel Le Senne (Vox) will continue to be president of the Balearic Parliament thanks to Marga Prohens’ PP. The popular party, who had their heads on a silver platter since June 18, prevented by their abstention that Le Senne, the second authority of the Balearic Islands, was expelled as requested by the opposition for having involuntarily torn up the photo of Aurora Picornell, a communist killed by Franco’s repression, during a plenary session of Parliament in June.
The PP kept its vote secret until the last moment on Tuesday in the impeachment proposal presented by the left-wing parties (PSOE, the nationalists of Més and Podemos). The position of the popular party was not clear after Santiago Abascal withdraw parliamentary support for the PP and broke all pacts, including the investiture agreement in the Balearic Islands, the only community where the PP governed in minority – without Vox positions in the Executive – after the elections of May 28, 2023.
Despite the reluctance that exists within the PP regarding this coup by the leader of Vox, The PP abstained and allowed Vox to maintain this position institutional in the Balearic Islands. The motion of impeachment failed with 25 votes in favor, seven against and 27 abstentions.
The Senne, which occupies a Vox seat for the first time and He did not chair the plenary session on Tuesday.accused the left of having “inflated this issue to the point of absurdity”: “I don’t hate anyone,” he stressed, recalling that the photographs exhibited by socialist deputies Mercedes Garrido and Pilar Costa at the table violated the ideological neutrality of the Balearic camera, regretting having been the victim of a campaign of harassment against him.
“They organized a circus and a campaign of harassment against me, and they even made political use of justice,” he said, referring to his accusation that he is under investigation for an alleged hate crime. “They talked about the attack as if I were a terrorist and they gathered their troops to shout at me ‘Le Senne, you fucking Nazi,'” Le Senne lamented, accusing the left-wing parties of being “experts in smokescreens.”
In its turn to speak, the PP criticized this Tuesday that the president of the Chamber had “lost his manners” that day, but he recalled that he had publicly apologized. In addition, the spokesman for the Popular Party in the Balearic Parliament, Sebastià Sagreras, considered that this suppression “is an initiative of the PSOE and its satellites” had the sole purpose of eliminating a position, and criticized the fact that those who led it were the president of Francina Armengol. councilors, that “they did not resign or ask for forgiveness” in the face of the “biggest scandal” in the Balearic Islands for the purchase of four million defective masks in the conspiracy linked to the former adviser to Minister Ábalos in the previous legislature.
The PP saves Le Senne, but warns that the pact with Vox is already broken and there is no turning back, so Marga Prohens will continue to govern “in minority and alone”, negotiating every initiative with all parties.
The next few weeks will determine How did the relationship go? former investment partners. After having “spared the life” of Le Senne, the Popular Party will bring the simplification decree to the Chamber so that it becomes law. And in less than a month, it will be the turn of the spending ceiling – which fell last year because of the internal struggles of Vox – then of the budgets.
During the plenary session this Tuesday, PSOE accuses PP of tactics and “play with democracy” because the popular people rushed until the last moment to reveal the meaning of their vote. His spokesman Iago Negueruela considered that El Senne is a “marked president” and offered the votes of the PSOE to expel him: “I would be extremely proud to vote next week for a PP president,” he said. The PP responded that “this is not sold by the seat of a chair.”
Along the same lines, the nationalists of Més per Majorque considered that what was debated this Tuesday The question was whether “Parliament was decent and dignified with Le Senne as president”.
The Senne did not resign this summer when Abascal broke the investiture pact with the PP and remained in power. Their strategy was to prolong as much as possible the request for a motion of impeachment and not to call an extraordinary plenary session in August. It was then that President Prohens asked him to resign for “consistency”, alleging that his position emanated from the pact unilaterally broken by Abascal. He told him to resign. Now, the PP prevents him from falling and is looking for a future and opportune ally.
Twice threatened
The “chief” of Le Senne was threatened twicefirst by his own colleagues who mutinied at the end of last year, and now by the opposition and the PP, who initially demanded his resignation. Each time, Le Senne has ended up being saved.
The first time, because the five rebel comrades who contested the national leadership of the party obtained the power they demanded and buried the hatchet; and now, because the PP is committed to maintaining the status quo, confident that Vox will support the major legislative projects that still have to go through Parliament. Something that does not seem to be closed after Abascal’s words this Monday, when he threatened popular governments by not supporting budgets if they did not distance themselves from the central government’s immigration policies.
In the Balearic Islands, there were practically no divergences in this case between PP and Vox. However, Santiago Abascal’s party, following the directives of Madrid, broke the 110-point agreement with the PP last July. Since then, Prohens’ executive insists that there is no going back and that it only wants to carry out its electoral program, negotiating each measure. The PP obtained 25 deputies, like the whole of the left, while the parliamentary majority is 30. Prohens usually relies on the deputy of Formentera and the non-registered deputy Xisco Cardona, who left Vox during the first crisis, but he needs three more to achieve a majority.
However, fragmentation within Vox could benefit Prohenssince there is a group critical of Abascal that does not follow the national guidelines and acts on its own. These are Idoia Ribas, Sergio Rodríguez – still within the Vox Baleares parliamentary group – and Agustín Buades, who recently resigned and is now a non-attached MP.
In a year Vox Baleares lost two deputies and the crises since the beginning of the legislature have not stopped. In October, the Menorcan deputy Xisco Cardona – who remains close to the PP – left and last Friday the deputy Agustín Buades left, denouncing that he felt like “a puppet” and did not share Abascal’s decision to break the pact with the PP. Parliamentary arithmetic is complicated but not impossible for the PP.
