THE PP: WHERE DOES IT GO NOW?

With José Ramón Bauzá having announced his intention to stand down as the PP’s leader following Sunday’s shattering election result, the party will have to find itself someone new to take it forward to the next election in 2019.
 There will be a delay to this procedure because Bauzá has said that he will not be going until “after the summer”, when an extraordinary congress will vote for his replacement.
This hiatus is not one that has been welcomed by some in the party, including the first president of the Balearics, Gabriel Cañellas, a fierce critic of Bauzá, who has demanded that he go now.
As far as the immediate future is concerned (until the congress, that is), Bauzá will stay on.

Make his mark
He seems intent on seeking to make his mark against whatever form a new government will take, with some suggesting that he is doing so (and delaying his departure) in order that he can make a bid to become a PP deputy for the Balearics in the national parliament.
His opponents in the party will, it would seem, have to wait for their moment to elect a new leader (which might even be later than has been suggested, as Madrid might put the extraordinary congress on hold until after the general election). But a change cannot come soon enough for some.
The disastrous election result has exposed the deep division within the PP, one that was evident well before the election, and it has been led by Cañellas, who is representative of a PP which is more sympathetic to the notion of regionalism, i.e. promoting the Balearics as a distinct region and seeking more autonomy, and to Catalan traditions than the Bauzá wing.
Bauzá, it does need reiterating, was not supposed to have been as antagonistic towards this regionalist tendency.
When he was elected as leader in 2010, he was chosen as the alternative to Carlos Delgado, then the mayor of Calvia, who was firmly signed up to a stance that was pro-Madrid, anti-regionalist and anti-Catalan. Everyone in the party knew this to be the case. Bauzá, they had thought, was different. As things turned out, he was not.
The division in the party had, therefore, grown even before the 2011 election. It is now so wide that a question has to be asked - might the PP actually split in the Balearics?
This is an option that hasn’t really been considered, but the reaction to Sunday’s disaster, one would imagine, would be one of reverting to the Cañellas school of thinking.
 But would the party, because of the way in which the division has been exposed, be able to accommodate competing views under a new leadership which, for some, might appear to be retrograde? But if it feels able to and can come together and present a more unified presence, who will the party choose to replace Bauzá?
The names that have been tossed around include Maria Salom, the outgoing president of the Council of Majorca, the current environment minister, Biel Company, the minister for finance, José Vicente Marí, and the soon-to-be ex-mayor of Palma, Mateo Isern.
Salom has had her own disaster at the Council, but she is an old favourite of the Cañellas wing; she was even called at the trial into the Soller Tunnel affair in the 1990s which led to Cañellas having to resign. Nevertheless, and though she is considered to be more regionalist in her outlook, she might be too tarnished by the heavy defeat.

Failed campaign
Marí, for all that he might have helped an economic improvement, was right at the centre of the PP’s failed election campaign. Would the failure count against him as much as an association with Bauzá because of his ministerial role?
 Company wasn’t a member of the PP when he joined the government in 2011 (he has become so since), but this previous independence, plus a generally sound management of his portfolio, might stand him in good stead.  He has also had his disagreements with Bauzá, which might also be to his advantage.
As for Isern, he was of course on the receiving end of the Machiavellian ways of both Bauzá and the PP’s president in Palma, José María Rodríguez (whose days must surely now be over). He is popular, but would he be the one to heal the wounds in the party?
A rather unexpected development has been thrown into the mix, and this is the possibility that a condition of a “pact” between left-leaning parties would see Biel Barceló of the Més socialists-nationalists becoming president. Were this to be the case, then this should influence the PP’s thinking. Barceló is impressive; more so than Francina Armengol of PSOE.

Dangers
His politics may not to be everyone’s taste, but he is a skilful operator, one whose nationalist (or at least regionalist-plus) views would require being taken into account.
Even if he doesn’t end up as president, the pact that is likely to emerge will have a complexion coloured by his views.
A danger for the PP is that with Bauzá staying on for the meantime and presenting the principal face of opposition in parliament (if only for a short period), the party’s rift becomes greater. Things could even become embarrassing; Barceló would have Bauzá for toast. And if this transpired, by the time the extraordinary congress occurs, the PP will be desperate to find anyone.
The choice might ultimately reside out in Majorca’s sticks, among the local parties where the PP has been smashed and where mayors had been either turning their backs on Bauzá or giving him less than unequivocal support. These local parties and their mayors or ex-mayors, attacked by Cañellas for not having been more assertive in challenging Bauzá, will want real change. The challenge that never came would have been centred around Isern. His time in Palma is over, but his time might just be coming.