National
The Spanish Media gets involved in the debate over the Partido Popular leadership
By h.b.
Apr 24, 2008 - 12:59 PM

‘Mariano Rajoy is in a mess that is hardly democratic and which he has created himself’. The words of Antonio Gala in El Mundo, and an example critique in the Spanish press today of the leader of the Partido Popular where the right wing papers ABC and El Mundo, and the COPE radio station, continue to demand a debate in the party to decide whether primary elections are needed or not.

Most of the commentators in these media are backing Esperanza Aguirre and her demand for a debate on the party’s direction and leadership. Federico Jiménez Losantos, the morning presenter on the COPE commented ‘The policy of Rajoy since the election has been to place the party apparatus as a barricade to protect himself from the effects of the last defeat’. Losantos thought the process was hardly democratic and made his allegiances clear by saying ‘The wise management of Fragardón, Rajardón and Gallardón, need a defeat as severe as the one suffered by the PP in Cataluña'.

However not everything in the press is going the way of the challenger, Esperanza Aguirre. Público notes today that she was a PP councillor in Madrid City Hall when Manuel Fraga personally chose José María Aznar as his successor, and then she did not say a a word, and when Aznar personally chose Rajoy as his successor she was a member of party’s national executive and again did not say a word.