For the time being, there will be no commission of inquiry into the Mediator case. The popular parliamentary group brought this initiative to the board of speakers yesterday, which was rejected.
Despite this, the Government groups did commit to holding hearings on this case in the Interior and Democratic Quality commission. One will star the director of the Civil Guard, María Gámez, possibly next week. The Democratic Quality Commission could call the former socialist deputy Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo, investigated in this case, but he would not have the obligation to go there.
This would be so because he would not appear in a commission of inquiry, the characteristics of which are different from an ordinary commission. In a commission of inquiry, the witnesses are obliged to attend, they must tell the truth under threat of sanction and all the required documentation must be handed over without discussion.
PSOE, UP, ERC, Bildu and PNB rejected this initiative of the Popular Party at the board, although the reasons for this rejection were not the same. ERC and Bildu are particularly interested in investigating the irregularities detected in the Mediador scandal in the Civil Guard. In fact, yesterday in Congress the spokesmen of the two formations went so far as to suggest that the PSOE had agreed to create a commission to precisely investigate the irregularities detected in this body.
However, at noon the socialist spokesman, Patxi López, flatly denied that the socialist group had accepted it. “We have both come to the conclusion that a specific investigation commission on the Civil Guard and the awarding of works to barracks when it is in the judicial process and there is secrecy of summary… can be that it is of no use”. The spokesperson of the PNB expressed himself in the same sense, who, however, assured that he will ask the Minister of the Interior for an explanation about the case.
Initially it sprinkled socialist leaders and businessmen from the Canary Islands; also a division general of the Civil Guard – imprisoned – who would have acted in recent years. But this week the plot is linked to another, previously investigated. It is about an alleged corrupt network of awarding works in Civil Guard barracks that extends throughout the Peninsula and that affects not only this legislature, but the previous ones.
That is why the PP is very interested in investigating the Canarian socialist leaders and in particular the former socialist deputy, expelled from the party, while the groups on the left have awakened an enormous interest in revealing what has happened in relation to the reforms of the Civil Guard barracks.
Parallel to this mess, yesterday the groups in the majority of the investiture with the PSOE at the head promised to promote, this time yes, an investigation commission on the Catalonia operation, and yesterday they assured that they would join also the latest revelations about the Kitchen case. Sources from Podemos assured yesterday that if this commission is set up they will call on the former president of the Popular Party, Pablo Casado, to testify.