Alex Trelinski
FORMER Valencian president, Francisco Camps, says he wants to oust underfire Carlos Mazon as the Partido Popular(PP) nominee for the 2027 regional elections.
Camps, 62, made the declaration at an event attended by hundreds of his supporters in Valencia on Wednesday.
He won three successive elections and was president between 2003 and 2011.
READ MORE:
- Former Valencia president pelted with eggs
- Ex-Valencia president, Eduardo Zaplana, in money laundering quiz over €1.6 million Madrid apartment purchase in Spain
In a speech, he defended his ‘legitimate right’ to run for the nomination to ‘win again by a majority’ and effectively relaunch the party in the region.
He also pledged his support for PP national leader Alberto Nuñez Feijoo to win the next general election.
Boosted by guests chanting ‘president’, Camps said he wanted to return to lead a party where everybody would be united.
He added that he wanted to embrace everybody within the region from current president, Carlos Mazon, through to local PP councillors.
Mazon, though backed by the national PP leadership, is in a precarious position following criticism of his handling of the October 29 floods.
Camps did not point his finger at Mazon over the disaster but blamed the national government for its ‘total absence’.
With under two years remaining before the next regional elections, it would be a spectacular return to front-line politics for Francisco Camps who ended up being mired in corruption allegations.
Camps was implicated in the so-called Gurtel case over receiving money to buy clothes.
He resigned in July 2011 to avoid standing trial while in office and was acquitted at a trial the following year.
The ex-president always denied allegations that the regional PP had been financed by ‘black money’.
Years later he was cleared of corruption over a contract to bring Formula 1 races to Valencia and also over contracts awarded in connection to a visit by Pope Benedict to the area in 2006.
Francisco Camps said on Wednesday that he remained loyal to the PP since his resignation but regretted that during his absence , his party ‘lost elections and lost voters’ at the same time that ‘new parties, new ideas, and new projects were born’.
In an obvious dig at the far-right Vox party, Camps added: “No one stood up to them.”
Click here to read more Politics News from The Olive Press.
