Regional president to step down

JOSE ANTONIO GRIÑAN, regional president of Andalucia is making way for someone younger.

He will not stand for re-election and his successor will be chosen on July 29.

PSOE national headquarters in Calle Ferraz , Madrid, has pushed through the formalities and Andalucia’s primaries will be held on July 29.

The process is apparently regarded at party headquarters in Madrid as a trip to the dentist: unpleasant and better faced as soon as possible.

Regardless of ideology, politicians — and Spanish politicians more than most – cling to power with a passion often absent elsewhere in their political lives.  Griñan, though, is letting go. 

“He’s done something unusual in Spain,” Carme Chacon said.

It would require a memory like a sieve to forget that Griñan backed Chacon over Rubalcaba as PSOE leader.  It is interesting to ponder what would have happened if she had been chosen but a waste of time asking why the party barons support Rubalcaba with such loyalty.   They want to remain within their comfort zones.

The leader appears comfortably deaf to Griñan’s veiled message, but it is time to pull away the props that are keeping him in place. 

He is one an ambitious minister not cut out for ultimate leadership.  Gordon Brown was another.  And look what happened there.