‘The big mistake in every political crisis is thinking that people are stupid’

To his terrible performance before the DANA as president of the Generalitat Valenciana and ‘sole command’ of the emergency, Carlos Mazón has to add to his resume in recent weeks an ineffective and disastrous management in what concerns political communication carried out carried out by his autonomous government and by himself, full of contradictions, sterile lies and deliberate inaccuracies. Some fatal errors in the strictly communicative field that have squandered a promising career in just days.

In recent polls published before the fateful time, Mazón gathered 40% of the votes, almost achieved an absolute majority and was “the best known and best valued politician by young people”. However, on November 10, more than 130,000 people took to the streets of Valencia to demand his resignation for his work against a DANA that has left more than 220 dead.

The discredit is such that, even within his own party, many believe that Mazón will not be able to recover from this blow. “He is the face of bad management,” said a few days ago an important baron El HuffPost. And for an important sector of the PP, the Valencian president is burned out and without electoral options. “The only thing he can achieve is to leave with dignity, managing the crisis well,” other sources pointed out. Pablo Montesinos.

A week ago, Mazón himself linked his candidacy for re-election in 2027 to a reconstruction that the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, demanded be done without new errors. The Valencian leader knows that it is always Genoa who configures the lists and that his leadership continues to believe that he is dead in political terms. However, aware that a resignation would give wings to Pedro Sánchez’s Government, Feijóo has decided to give his baron time to redeem himself and demonstrate his leadership capabilities in a crisis situation.

A second opportunity to correct both the numerous erroneous decisions taken during the worst natural disaster of the last century in Spain, as well as the communication developed by the Valencian government during it.

And the political scientists and experts in political communication consulted by El HuffPost they consider that Mazón has made fatal strategic errors when transmitting information related to his action during DANA. Especially, the one deployed to cover up controversial chapters such as his prolonged lunch with the journalist Maribel Vilaplana on the afternoon of the catastrophe or the one related to the late sending of the alert message to warn citizens, which reached people’s mobile phones after several Municipalities were flooded and there were many missing.

Manuel Lopez Funespolitical strategy and communication advisor, He sees it as very “unfortunate” that Mazón’s team offered different versions of where Mazón was that afternoon of Tuesday, October 29.. “When you know that something is going to happen, the best thing is to anticipate it, explain it and ask for forgiveness,” he says. There was talk first of a private meal and then of a working lunch. In fact, it was not determined until ten days later where that meal was and with whom.

There was also a lie about the duration of this meeting in which, supposedly, Mazón offered the journalist the address of À Punt. His cabinet assured that he returned from it at 5:00 p.m., although it was later learned that it lasted until 6:00 p.m., when the situation was already extremely serious in the Utiel-Requena region.

“The big mistake in any political crisis is thinking that people are stupid and that they will believe anything you tell them. Because what citizens really want is to be told the truth,” says López Funes. In fact, according to the expert, only then are people able to forgive certain negligence. “If they see someone making a mistake but taking the reins of the situation, they are capable of understanding it and even forgiving it. But you should always treat them as intelligent people who are not going to accept lies,” he adds.

Then, the late SMS would arrive, the delay in the request for help from the UME and the lack of communication with the mayors of the municipalities most affected by DANA. But what has most damaged Mazón’s image in recent weeks, according to experts, has been the constant changes in criteria and arguments.

“You cannot be on a Friday thanking the President of the Government for his collaboration and help and, 24 hours later, criticizing him for the complete opposite,” details Isaac M. Hernández, political consultant specialized in political marketing. A loss of credibility that the Valencian president has suffered along with a clear perception of weakness. “Mazón has become too overshadowed by his own party. From the first minute, Feijóo has wanted to establish his own line of argument in this crisis, going against the interests of Mazón himself on several occasions. Which, in turn, has led the Valencian president to make endless ups and downs and excuses. And this is something that penalizes the entire electorate, even those on the right,” he says.

And if that were not enough, Mazón has also lost a fundamental tool for effective political communication: proximity. “People know that he was not at the forefront of the crisis during the key hours of DANA. And One of the perceptions that most affects human beings is the feeling of abandonment. It is something that cannot be forgiven“says Hernández.

Nor would his explanations in the Valencian Cortes on November 15 or the changes in his government announced these days have been correct. “This remodeling of his team is perceived more as an act of reaction due to the pressure he feels on him than because of his conviction.although it is true that the two dismissed councilors – Nuria Montes and Salomé Pradas – have not made it very difficult with their statements. In any case, I would have advised him to have made these changes later,” explains Hernández.

A diagnosis shared by López Funes, who also does not understand that the replacements were announced in dribs and drabs and not in blocks. “The message you convey with this strategy is that no one wants to be part of your government and that you fill in gaps as best you can. And “People feel uneasy if they see that whoever is in charge is improvising in their decisions,” duck.

Furthermore, both of them do not predict that Mazón has much of a future ahead of him. “I don’t think it will be long before the pressure takes its toll and he makes a decision. I think it is quite likely that soon we will have a motion of censure or an electoral advance,” says Hernández. Meanwhile, López Funes believes that the Valencian president can only cling to the reconstruction work, as long as it is accompanied by good political communication. . “People don’t need to see you covered in mud. People need to see you managing”he concludes.