Everything is Koldo García for the PP. The amnesty, the economy or the supposed immigration crisis no longer exist. Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party has decided to focus all its firepower as opposition to the Government on the alleged case of corruption in the purchase of medical supplies during the pandemic that involves, among others, someone who was a close collaborator of José Luis Ábalos in the Ministry of Transportation. The transfer to the Mixed Group of the former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE is not enough for the PP, which has targeted not only other ministries and authorities that could operate with the same plot, but also the President of the Government himself.
“You knew it and you covered it up,” Feijóo snapped at Pedro Sánchez this Wednesday during the control session. “The responsibilities do not end with Ábalos,” party spokesperson Borja Sémper said on Monday. “It’s a smokescreen,” parliamentary spokesperson Miguel Tellado said on Tuesday about Ábalos’s fall from grace and the requests for political responsibility that the PSOE has demanded of him.
In the PP they are not going to let go of the dam. A party leader assured this Tuesday after Ábalos’ appearance that whoever was Sánchez’s ‘number three’ in the party was no longer important to them. “We are not going to talk about him anymore,” he said. And this Wednesday, although references have been made to Ábalos, the PP has already considered the blown fuse amortized and has focused its strategy on those who still remain in the Government or its orbit.
The parliamentary offensive had already been planned since last week, when the investigating judge gave the go-ahead to the police operation that led to around twenty arrests and various searches by the Civil Guard. The PP then registered up to six questions about the plot for the control session this Wednesday.
But even those questions referring to other issues, such as Borja Sémper’s about the “equality” of women in sports competitions, in reference to the supposed advantage that trans athletes could have, became an allegation against the Government for the ‘Koldo case’, which for the PP is already the ‘Sanchez case’. Or Manuel Cobo, who was vice mayor of Madrid in the last decade and who has taken advantage of a question about the CIS to the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, to further criticize the alleged corruption plot.
The other issues that have dominated its arguments in recent weeks and months have almost completely disappeared from the PP’s agenda. Although this Wednesday the Secretary General, Cuca Gamarra, mentioned the amnesty in her ‘face to face’ in Congress, she only did so in passing and to criticize that the Executive now wants to become a champion against corruption, when the law of amnesty, he recalled, seeks to forgive crimes such as embezzlement.
But the grace measure that the Government is negotiating with Junts to save Carles Puigdemont has become a toxic product for the PP, after the revelations of various media outlets, including elDiario.es, about Feijóo’s proposals for a “reconciliation” in Catalonia, and that also undergo some type of pardon for the politicians pending trial for the independence process of the last decade.
And the ‘Koldo case’ has come to take the amnesty out of focus one week before the deadline for PSOE and Junts to close an agreement.
Nor has the PP managed to turn the economy into an element of traction against the Government. Although there is data that confirms the worsening of the living conditions of the most disadvantaged people due to the increase in prices, the Executive has managed to weather the storm thanks, among other things, to the increases in the SMI and the improvement of the labor market. .
Appearances and questions
But corruption is another matter. In the PSOE they are aware of the damage it does to their bases. On Tuesday afternoon, a prominent parliamentary leader acknowledged that there has been a lot of discussion in socialist groups about the amnesty, but corruption is a shot at the waterline of the party and the Government.
As Pedro Sánchez has recalled in recent days, his arrival at Moncloa occurred on the back of a corruption scandal, the ‘Gürtel case’, and its multiple derivatives, including the use of the National Police and the State apparatus. to spy on rivals, fabricate evidence against them and destroy evidence that affected the PP itself.
If the Sánchez Government has as its banner the fight against corruption, the scandal of the alleged illegal commissions affects it fully. And it also limits the PSOE’s speech against the way in which Feijóo reached the top of the PP.
That is why the opposition has redoubled its offensive against the Executive with a battery of written questions and urgent appearances by senior officials, which it reported this Wednesday.
The PP has requested that Minister Bolaños give explanations before the Plenary Session of Congress to “report on the Government’s responsibility” in the collection of the alleged illegal commissions in which none of his ministries participated even in an indirect way.
Also from the Minister of Transportation, Óscar Puente, whose department was, according to the investigation, the center of the plot when Ábalos directed it. Puente offered a press conference yesterday after analyzing the contracts in doubt.
But the PP has requested the appearances in committee of, for example, the Undersecretary of Transportation or the top officials of the public companies EMFESA, ADIF, Puertos del Estado or Correos, among others. In this last case, the PP points out the issuance of a commemorative stamp of Zamora CF, whose president is also accused in the corruption plot.
The PP deputies have also registered a battery of questions for the Government to respond in writing about the political responsibilities in the plot and in the charges and former charges investigated by the National Court.
Source: www.eldiario.es
