Palma.The centre-right party's Francisca Pol stood down from all her positions within the party yesterday morning after causing outrage after posting a fake photograph on her Facebook account of the country's Defence Minister apparently showing a bare breast to senior members of the military during an operational briefing.
The image was accompanied by the caption what a PSOE minister has to do to capture votes. The Popular Party candidate has since apologised over the picture of Defence Minister Carme Chacon, altered to appear as if her shirt was open to reveal a breast. The candidate for the Senate list for Majorca today submitted her resignation from all public posts, said the Partido Popular in a statement. A thousand pardons for the image of the minister that I posted within the colloquial context of this page, which is an absolutely false montage circulating on the Internet and which I immediately withdrew when realizing it was an inappropriate joke in very bad taste, Pol said on her Facebook.
However, yesterday Pol came under fierce criticism from the PSOE Socialist Party in the Balearics for her actions and for not having resigned sooner.
The PSOE spokesperson in the Balearics, the former President of the Council of Majorca Francina Armengol, said that she was pleased that Pol had finally decided to do the right thing because a woman's image can never be used in such a way, what ever the circumstances.
Armengol added that women have fought hard over the years to play an important role in the Spanish democratic system and Pol's actions merely made a mockery of all that hard work. The digitally enhanced photograph of Chacon meeting with defence officials, widely shown in the Spanish media, has since been taken down from the candidate's Facebook page.
But, Biel Barcelo, the spokesperson for the left-wing PSM-IV-ExM coalition in the Balearics, said that sorry was not enough.
This is the first big scandal to have rocked the election campaign and the digitally enhanced photograph, was widely shown in the Spanish media.
How it will affect the PP's campaign remains to be seen.