The Spanish right chooses Mariano Rajoy's successor

Groggy after the fall of Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish Popular Party will choose on Saturday its new leader, between Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, Rajoy's former right-hand man, and Pablo Casado , young wolf straight tendency lasts. The extraordinary congress of the PP, which began Friday, July 20, will end on Saturday with the vote of 3 082 voters, appointed to nominate the new party president who will be his candidate in the next legislative elections, scheduled no later than mid-2020

President of the party since 2004 and head of the Spanish government since 2011, Mr. Rajoy, who did not want to appoint a dolphin, left politics in early June, a few days after being brutally ejected from power the 1 ^er June, sunk by the conviction of his party in a mega lawsuit for corruption.

This scandal allowed the socialist Pedro Sanchez to pbad a motion of censure and to rise to the head of the executive with the support of the radical Left Party Podemos, Catalan separatists and Basque nationalists

Two candidates, two orientations

The electors of the PP have choice between two orientations, symbolized by the candidates designated on July 5 by the militants, during unprecedented primary within the party. The continuity with Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, number two Rajoy governments for six and a half years, or a right turn with Pablo Casado, a 37-year-old MP who proposes a conservative refoundation of the party.

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Highlighting her experience, Saenz de Santamaria, a 47-year-old senior official, says she is best able to beat Pedro Sanchez in the polls and sees no need for an ideological refoundation of the party. "I have the energy, the envy and the experience. Pedro Sanchez finds himself at the controls of a Boeing 747, and he does not even have the pilot's license of a plane of tourism " she ironized during a meeting.

Licensee in right, Casado, 37, has placed his campaign under the banner of the hard right, recalling his admiration for former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, without questioning the European project, unlike other conservatives

He protested against the decriminalization of euthanasia advocated by the new socialist government, advocated for lower taxes on income and societies, and advocated great firmness against Catalan separatists. [19659006] A party to rebuild

The winner of this duel will have to recompose a party that lost three million voters between the legislative elections of 2011, where Rajoy obtained an absolute majority, and those of 2016. Many of them are turned to the small the liberal party Ciudadanos, the PP's main rival in the center-right.

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For José Pablo Ferrandiz, chief investigator of the Metroscopia polling institute, Saenz de Santamaria "would offer a better electoral future to the PP" . But both will have "a lot of trouble attracting people to Ciudadanos" that has sucked many voters disgusted by the many corruption scandals that have splashed the PP in recent years. [19659005] "Neither of them can immediately put the party back on the water" abounds Narciso Michavila, president of the GAD3 polling institute and good connoisseur of the party. The PP, the first political force in the Parliament, will in any case be quickly put in order of battle: municipal, regional and European elections are waiting for May 2019.