The federal coordinator of IU and candidate of the Por Andalucía coalition for the presidency of the Junta, Antonio Maíllo, has called this Tuesday for the “mobilization of the left” as “key” to achieve a “surprise” in the regional elections set for May 17 and to bring about a “government of change” in Andalusia that replaces the Executive headed by the president of PP-A, Juanma Moreno, of whom he has stressed that “problems are accumulating for him.”
Maíllo has spoken thus in an interview on La 1 of TVE, one day after the president of the Junta, Juanma Moreno, made official the call for the Andalusian elections for Sunday, May 17.
The leader of IU, designated in November as candidate for the presidency at the head of Por Andalucía —coalition that groups together IU, Movimiento Sumar and Iniciativa del Pueblo Andaluz—, has interpreted that Moreno has opted for May 17 because “it was the earliest of the possibilities he had, and the problems he wants to tackle with an electoral call that does not make the end of the legislature more difficult for him are accumulating.”
In this sense, he/she has mentioned the “anger” that he/she perceives among the citizenry due to the deterioration of public healthcare, as well as the situation of families who “have to pay 4,000 euros” for one of their children to study “a training cycle” of Vocational Training.
According to what the candidate for Por Andalucía has remarked, “that daily wear and tear is what really worries Moreno Bonilla, because it is what should be the center of the Andalusian debate”, and has warned that there will be “a massive mobilization to protest his destruction of public healthcare”, something that the president “does not want to grow on the eve of an election and harm his electoral prospects”.
For Maíllo, Moreno's “management” at the head of the Junta is summarized, on the one hand, in “a conscious destruction of public services”, which “in healthcare is evident”, and, on the other hand, in a “boycott” of the state Housing Law, whose implementation “would have allowed to assess and block the exorbitant rental prices” in the “stressed areas” of the “large cities”.
To spring the "surprise" against the polls
In this context, Maíllo has recalled that “in Andalusia great surprises have always occurred” compared to what the polls anticipated. He alluded to the 2012 regional elections, when “all the surveys” predicted an absolute majority for the PP-A of Javier Arenas which finally did not occur, and to those of 2018, when the then socialist president, Susana Díaz, “lost the government” despite the fact that “all the polls gave her” that she would revalidate it.
“Andalusia has experience in giving surprises,” emphasized the IU leader, who maintains that Moreno has already “lost the absolute majority” obtained in June 2022. To illustrate it, he resorted to a colloquial expression and pointed out that the PP-A leader had four years ago “a flower in his ass,” by getting “the last six seats from six provinces” which granted him the absolute majority with 58 deputies.
Asked about whether the left can “capitalize on the support of a large social mass for the 'no to war'” in Iran, Maíllo has argued that “the debate about peace and about war is going to be decisive,” because Moreno “has not taken a stand” nor has he raised “the voice of dignity and sovereignty” before the US bases in Rota (Cádiz) and Morón de la Frontera (Sevilla), which in his opinion represent “a great threat.”
Following this, he has valued that the Government of Spain, in which his political space participates through Sumar, partner of the PSOE, has “prevented said bases from being used” in the war driven by the United States and Israel.
Believes that Feijóo "will come little in campaign" to Andalusia
In the same way, Maíllo has predicted that the national president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, "will come little in campaign" to Andalusia, because Moreno maintains "great contradictions" with the state leader of his party and suffers "a deeply uncomfortable position regarding the national strategy" of the conservative formation.
Furthermore, he has pointed out that the Andalusian president of the PP intends to capture the vote of those who wish to prevent Vox from governing, and has recalled that “that debate was valid in 2022”, but “now it no longer works, because management has deteriorated a lot in these last four years, especially in public services, and there is a daily wear and tear” that is perceived in the “discomfort of the people who use” them.
In Maíllo's opinion, Andalusian citizens must “be clear” that, “if he can, Moreno is going to govern with Vox”, and has asked to reflect on “the consequences that this will have” in the “deepening” of the “privatizations” that the PP “is already developing”. Therefore, he has stressed that his “challenge” as a candidate is “to mobilize people and convince them that, if they mobilize, we can change the government”.
The IU leader has also defended that the Andalusian left is “more prepared than before” to face this election, after having “appointed all candidates in the provinces” and closed an electoral program already presented. He also stressed that the project he leads adds “more than 800 councilors” in Andalusian city councils and participates in “municipal governments”.
“We are a project of government will and with solutions for Andalusia,” Maíllo has claimed, convinced that the community “has a solution.” He concluded that “from that expectation of hope, of optimism, of belief and trust in our land, we can mobilize a left that right now is seeing what it is going to do,” and whose “success or failure will have much to do with the ability to mobilize” the Andalusian citizenry and ensure that on May 17 “they get off the couch and vote For Andalusia.”