The Board of Les Corts Valencianes decided yesterday to listen to the recommendations of one of the lawyers of the regional Parliament and exclude from the race to direct the Anti-Fraud Agency Eduardo Beut, the candidate proposed by the Spanish Association of Managers for Public Administration (AEGAP).
The report agreed with another entity that proposed another candidate and concluded that the AEGAP cannot be considered a “social organization that currently works against fraud and corruption in the Valencian Community”, one of the requirements set by the law to present a candidate. Only these organizations and parliamentary groups (which once renounced using that power) can register applicants. In this way, the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency (AVAF) could be the first of the large statutory bodies to be unblocked.
And with the decision of Les Corts, the former delegate of the Tax Agency and who the opposition linked to former president Eduardo Zaplana, now tried in court, falls from the race. Eduardo Beut was considered the favorite of the PP, although the popular ones (even yesterday when the popular spokesperson Miguel Barrachina assured that he did not know Beut) have tried to disassociate themselves from that proposal.
Thus, currently, there is only one candidate left in the race to occupy the position: Gustavo Segura, Director of Analysis and Research of the Agency and strong man of the AVAF, who was proposed by three entities, these yes, with accredited experience in the field of fighting corruption.
However, your choice will not be easy, for various reasons. The PP has presented a bill – which will have the support of Vox – to change, among other issues, the election procedure for the director of the Anti-Fraud Agency. In the legislative proposal, the necessary majorities are lowered (absolute will suffice) to elect the agency’s top leader.
However, this proposal will not be approved until the summer and yesterday the PP did not rule out that the renewal process underway – for which there is only one candidate – could continue with the Botànic law still in force. In fact, his Vox partner assumed that they would support the only candidate. Compromís also showed yesterday its willingness to vote for Segura and, along these lines, asked the PP to unblock the renewal and choose to appoint the only candidate.
The PP ombudsman did not want to venture the direction of his party’s vote until Segura appears before the relevant commission. An affirmative vote and refusal to wait for the law to change would be a gesture of detente. Nor is the PSPV clear about the meaning of its vote; Segura is one of the most important people in the agency’s current organizational chart and the relationship between the socialists and the Antifraud director is not exactly going through its best moment.
Despite this, it is evident that the parliamentary groups have few excuses for not voting for the only candidate – who has also been proposed by civil society -, which would allow a first renewal of a statutory body and, who knows, whether it would guide the negotiation of others still blocked. In the first and only meeting of the president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, with the leader of the PSPV, Diana Morant, the possibility of starting a negotiation on the renewal of the statutory institutions was already put on the table.
