More than once we have mentioned that Alberto Núñez Feijóo was much more relaxed and happy when he was president of the Xunta de Galicia than now that he is the leader of the opposition. It is not easy at all to deal with Pedro Sánchez and endure daily the pressure of public opinion, which swings between those who criticize him for being too aggressive and those who attack him for the exact opposite. The same thing happened to Mariano Rajoy, but unlike him, Feijóo has Vox to his right, which is no small matter.
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That is why, when the president of the PP makes a slip, it is easy for it to be magnified. Thus, he was not accurate last week in Bilbao when he called absenteeism at work a “cancer.” The popular president was referring to absences that occur in workplaces, mostly on Mondays and Fridays, and not to sick leaves caused by medical situations. It doesn’t matter. His phrase about cancer was what stuck during his visit to Basque businessmen. However, the reality of the meeting was very different. Feijóo left the audience at the Basque Business Circle satisfied with his defense of the autonomous system – he recalled that the battle had been fought in Galicia and cited the Galician nationalist Castelao as an example – and said that, beyond the agreements he might reach with Vox, he was going to respect the Basque economic agreement.
Feijóo’s mistake is minor. Very different is what surrounds Mariano Rajoy and his derogatory phrase that France has “a very high-level staff,” but “without French people,” in the article he published in El Debate . The argument used yesterday by the PP leadership that it was a “sarcastic” article does not hold. If it has offended so many people, Rajoy’s obligation, especially as a former head of government, is to apologize. There is no harm in doing so. We all make mistakes. Rajoy is already late in acknowledging that the phrase was inappropriate and in preventing the issue from growing bigger.
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Today, the PP is the party that leads in all the polls. It should not fall into these unforced errors that fuel doubts about its leaders.
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