When Enrique Riquelme announced the future addition to his candidacy of Erling Haaland, on Wednesday around 11:05 pm, there were 55 minutes left before the deadline to claim the most important signing in a Madrid electoral campaign: postal voting. It is said that Figo changed the elections for Florentino Pérez in 2000, and that the Norwegian should be the announcement that triggers an electoral turnaround for Riquelme, but the last three elections at Real Madrid were decided by the envelopes, not the names.
On Wednesday at 12:00 am, the period given by the Electoral Board to request postal voting ended, not to exercise that right, which extended until the Saturday before the elections. However, many had already been deposited at both candidates' headquarters. In these elections, considering previous precedents, the sending of ballot papers had been safeguarded by the need for a notarial deed to confirm the identity and postal vote of the member.
But Riquelme himself denounced that, although the census cannot be provided to the candidates, "it has only reached all members from Florentino Pérez's candidacy." "This is increasingly resembling Maduro and Venezuela," he said in an interview before denouncing irregularities and dirty tricks by his rival to hinder votes in favor of the candidate.
"This campaign is orchestrated by those who were involved in the darkest period of Real Madrid, that of Ramón Calderón." These were the words that Florentino Pérez uttered at his first campaign event. The current president knew the importance of a resource that took away an election from him in 1995 and handed it to him on a silver platter in 2000, with Figo as the trump card.
In the first elections in which Florentino ran, at just 48 years old, he narrowly missed reaching the presidency of Real Madrid. There were 700 votes difference with Ramón Mendoza, but while the winner recorded 5,375 postal votes out of 15,203, the ACS president remained at 3,985 out of 14,505. Five years later, having learned the lesson, Pérez took the presidency from Lorenzo Sanz by improving Mendoza's strategy: he obtained 16,469 votes, 11,250 by mail, while the former president got 13,842, 8,130 by mail. That is, a difference of more than 3,000.
A separate case was the 2006 elections, where Ramón Calderón was charged with alleged involvement in "massive falsification of postal votes." The Madrid Court of Instruction No. 47 suspended these ballot papers to prevent a fraud allegedly caused by Calderón, as the 10,500 votes cast could have given victory to Villar Mir.
The postal votes cast have been under the custody of the club's security services since yesterday, in a room set up for this purpose at Ciudad Real Madrid. Each candidate can appoint observers to ensure the chain of custody is not broken. The key to these elections may lie in them, beyond the candidates countering each other with announcements of different signings, no matter how big they are.
Everything will come to an end on Sunday with the ballot boxes placed in the basketball pavilion at Ciudad Real Madrid from 9:00 am to 8:00 pm, on a day when the capital will be blocked due to the Pope's visit. Therefore, despite Riquelme's insistence on urging members to vote, the outcome may already be decided by some envelopes. As happened in the last three elections for the white presidency.