All parties represented in the Parliament have declared themselves ‘ready’ to go to the polls after the president of the Balearic Government, Marga Prohens, hinted at a possible early election.
This was stated by the various parliamentary spokespersons at their respective press conferences following the Spokespersons’ Committee meeting held on Wednesday.
The centre right Partido Popular spokesperson, Sebastià Sagreras, considered that his party is in an ‘optimal’ position to face an early election, as ‘all the polls’ place it ‘close to an absolute majority’.
‘The PP likes to go to the polls, but we also have the capacity to hold out until 2027,’ he stressed. However, he said that, as Prohens has stated on several occasions, ‘elections are not announced, but rather signed and called’.
The PSIB Balearic socialist party spokesperson, Iago Negueruela, argued that ‘the best scenario’ for the Balearics would be early elections, which he referred to as an ‘improvisation’ by the president.
When asked by journalists who the PSIB’s candidate for the regional government would be, the socialist reiterated that this should be decided in the party’s internal process.
‘We would be very encouraged and very happy to activate the procedures as soon as possible if Prohens calls elections,’ he said. Far-right Vox spokesperson Manuela Cañadas said that her party ‘would not be afraid’ of early elections. ‘We would be very happy. At the national level, the PP is losing votes, they are doing something wrong,’ she stressed.
The parliamentary leader of MÉS per Mallorca, Lluís Apesteguia, said that they are “more than prepared to go to the polls when necessary with all our strength and conviction. The eco-sovereignist, despite considering that the president’s words in Tuesday’s plenary session are ‘symptomatic of the way the Government works’ and go beyond being ‘an anecdote’, has argued that early elections should not be used as ‘a threat to opposition parties’.
‘Or not just the opposition. Because when she said that everyone would tremble, she pointed her finger at the Vox benches. But perhaps it is she who would tremble,’ he added. The spokesperson for Més per Menorca, Josep Castells, said that his party would ‘absolutely not’ tremble if citizens were called to the polls prematurely. Proof of this, he said, is that he was one of those who started shouting ‘Elections!’ during the plenary session, which has been attributed to the socialist benches.
‘We are fully prepared. We are delighted that there will be elections, because when a party is in opposition, no matter how well it is doing, that is what it wants,’ he stressed. This morning, Prohens toned down his rhetoric, highlighting the “stability” of his executive and stressing that elections ‘cannot be called for political opportunism’.