It’s been a tumultuous week, to say the very least, for the Partido Popular in Orihuela, with accusations of fraud pitched by the local Spanish press at José Vegara, the number 1 candidate on it’s electoral list.
This was followed on Saturday by his formal nomination, attended by national party secretary Cuca Gamarra and the president of the party in the Valencian Community, Carlos Mazón, both of whom made speeches in Vegara’s support.
On Monday we then had the formal announcement of the PP list, a list that, because of internal party wranglings, was delivered five hours late, and then on Tuesday Vegara finally took to centre stage where he responded to the allegations that had looked like costing him the party nomination.
In the meantime, we had confirmation of the indictment by the Public Prosecutor, which requests 7 years in prison for the PP candidate, for alleged tax offenses and false commercial declarations. The PP response, certainly at the moment, is that it is a private matter!
As the story unfolded over the weekend, Vegara gave a number of different versions of the events. Initially, before his launch and the major speech by Cuca Gamarra, he said that the case was closed in 2015, and that when the investigation was opened, in 2011, he had not been with the company because of a heart operation.
At the presentation of his candidacy on Monday, however, Vegara then admitted that the case was open, but attributed the Treasury investigation to “an error by an employee”. Minutes after these statements, the indictment from the Prosecutor’s Office was formally released, in which it stated that Vegara and three other people are directly identified as the architects of a plot to create false invoices and defraud the Treasury.
Tuesday saw Vegara tackle the accusations head on, saying that the campaign against him, much to his regret, clearly shows that for some “in politics, anything goes” to win an election.
“For me, I am very disappointed. It is a totally orchestrated matter, I am suffering a witch hunt, persecution, which, supposedly by chance, came to light just three days before having to present my candidacy, as well as coinciding with an important party conference by the Orihuela PP”.
Vegara went on to say that “this was intended to destroy my reputation when my only desire is to serve the people of Orihuela.”
He spoke of the renewed and exciting electoral list, his efforts to unite the PP which he will continue to lead for the good of Orihuela and the party he represents. “I am calm and I will continue with my head held high because this is a problem that has been going on for a long time, more than 30 years, and is between me and the Tax Agency. It is a matter dating back to the 2005 financial year, a private matter of the company, and totally unrelated to public management.”
