Jaime Martin Cabria
Oviedo, May 11 (EFE).- Adrián Barbón’s PSOE faces the electoral appointment of May 28 with the confidence of maintaining a majority that will allow him to govern alone for the second consecutive legislature, while the PP has placed its hopes in a new candidate, the senior EU official Diego Canga, to try to regroup the center-right vote.
The decomposition of Ciudadanos, the effect of the internal crisis of Podemos or the apparent push of Vox will be key in the regional elections.
BARBÓN SEEKS TO REPEAT MONOCOLOR GOVERNMENT
The Socialists, at the head of the Principality in nine of the eleven autonomous legislatures, have governed these four years in a minority with the support of the IU, and in a timely manner from Ciudadanos, Foro and Podemos, which has allowed them to carry out all the budgets.
In a community in which the groups of the chamber cannot vote against the investiture of a candidate -only in favor or abstain-, Barbón hopes to obtain a sufficient majority for another monocolor government, seeking during the legislature the specific support of other formations, as it has done so far with 20 of the 45 seats in the General Board, now divided into seven colors.
THE PP APPEALS TO THE CONCENTRATION OF THE VOTE
The popular Diego Canga, arrived from Brussels less than six months ago, does not give up giving “a surprise” in Asturias and for this he intends to unite the center right and win the votes of the Forum and a Ciudadanos in disarray.
The popular seek to come back with a candidate, appointed directly by Feijóo, with a reputation as a good manager and who has made a renewed candidacy in which only three of his ten parliamentarians repeat.
THE MINORITIES
The PP hopes to be the main beneficiary of a decomposing Ciudadanos that does not even remotely aspire to reach the five deputies in 2019.
He also hopes to gain some support from the Forum which, with two seats, will dispute its space with a new party that has emerged around its regionalist orbit, “Suma Principado”, while Vox hopes to increase the two seats with which it entered the chamber this legislature.
To the left of the PSOE is a Podemos that starts with four seats but carries an internal fracture due to the preparation of the electoral list, a situation that could benefit the IU, a natural partner of the socialists in Asturias and that has two deputies .
THE INCOGNIT OF GIJÓN
At the municipal level, the PSOE chooses to maintain the vast majority obtained in 2019, when it achieved 428 of the 930 councilors and took control of 54 of the 78 mayoralties, among which are some of the main councils, such as Avilés or Siero, and where you expect to repeat.
One of the great unknowns of the municipal elections will be in Gijón, the largest city in Asturias, where the socialist militancy forced the renewal of the candidacy to the detriment of the mayoress, Ana González, to place Luis Manuel Flórez at the head of the list ” Floro”, a former independent Jesuit who chaired Proyecto Hombre for 33 years.
In Oviedo, Alfredo Canteli seeks to repeat his mandate after incorporating two of the Ciudadanos councilors with whom he has governed the city for four years into the PP candidacy, a pact that the orange formation broke after verifying the exercise of “transfuguismo” of its until recently leader in Asturias, Ignacio Cuesta, now number 3 of the popular.