“The Government is going to have my support, with my vote.” The former Minister of Transport, José Luis Ábalos, has come to confirm that the majority of the investiture that made up the President of the Government will not suffer the consequences of his departure to the mixed group as a result of the Koldo case. Although the former minister says he has been defenestrated by his own party, from which he has been provisionally suspended from membership, his intention is to continue supporting the Executive’s initiatives, including the Amnesty law, which has yet to be submitted again to Congress. the Deputies at the end of next month.
In statements to RAC1, Ábalos has confirmed that he will support the Amnesty law: “Yes, I have defended it until now,” despite the fact that he is no longer subject to the voting discipline of the socialist group in Congress. Even so, Ábalos has no intention of putting the majority of the investiture at risk and rules out adding his vote to the right and the extreme right.
“I am going to continue fighting for what I think, and to prevent the right from developing as a prelude to a radical project, but I also have to fight against another process, a political persecution that he considers unfair for not being investigated in the Koldo case, the case of the alleged illegal commissions in the purchase of masks during the pandemic that fully affects his former advisor in the ministry, his former advisor Koldo García.
Ábalos’s confirmation that he will continue to politically follow the precepts of the PSOE so as not to damage the parliamentary majority that supports the Government is relevant, since his departure to the mixed group subtracted one new seat from an already fragmented majority. Before Ábalos, the five Podemos deputies also went to the mixed group, after the break with Sumar.
The former minister will therefore continue to help President Pedro Sánchez even though he has stopped having contact with him since the Koldo case broke out. “I have not spoken with Sánchez since this crisis began,” but “I know about the president’s problems, I know what he is like, and I have been in contact with the organization secretary of the PSOE all this week,” he commented.
He also hasn’t spoken to Koldo García lately. “I couldn’t say since when,” he explained, but he did hint that on some occasions his way of acting raised suspicions. “There is always something that catches your attention and asked for explanations, and I was given some, but I didn’t start to contrast them,” he lamented. In his opinion, the problem was the “surveillance” over “the life of the person”, because “the other thing was absolutely fine”, and he recalled again that there have already been two investigations by the Court of Accounts on the hiring and that the procedure It was proven correct.
Ábalos has insisted that he is going to the mixed group instead of giving up his seat because “I do not share the reasons, from any point of view” of those who demand that he leave, “neither from political strategy, nor from the point of view.” personal,” he says. Furthermore, the former minister limits it to a question of “honor”: “I am not willing to be stigmatized.”
In another interview given to Catalunya Radio, the former secretary of organization of the PSOE has expressed his disappointment with Santos Cerdán, who now occupies this same position at the top of the party and who, as he recalled, was the one who brought Koldo García to his team when he had that responsibility and “needed a driver available 24 hours a day.” “Yes,” he explained, “he was a militant from Navarra. They all knew each other perfectly. And he was very willing. It was all willingness.” From there, Ábalos added “the disappointment [with Santos Cerdán] and the mistrust… when you see these things is when you observe that the disappointment is actually shared.”
Ábalos has announced that he will appeal his suspension from PSOE membership because he is not immersed in criminal proceedings nor has he been called to an oral trial. In this sense, he has pointed out that there is no precedent for a former minister and a former organizational secretary of the party to be subjected to such a public order.
