“I can’t give up”, alleged former minister José Luis Ábalos yesterday. He thus consummated his break with Pedro Sánchez, after disobeying the express mandate of the PSOE executive who on Monday ordered him to resign within 24 hours from the act of deputy in Congress to assume “political responsibility” for the murky scandal of alleged corruption in which his personal assistant, Koldo García, is charged.
After keeping the leadership of the PSOE in his heart until the end of the ultimatum to hand over his seat, Ábalos appeared in Congress to refute the party’s resolution and announce that he is maintaining his parliamentary record: “I have decided to move to the mixed group”.
Faced with this decision, the PSOE executive issued an urgent resolution, by which it opened a disciplinary file against Ábalos and provisionally suspended him from militancy. The “very serious faults” appreciated by Ferraz in the decision of the ex-minister, for having breached the mandate of the federal executive and leaving with his seat in the mixed group of Congress, pour him, in the last extreme and after the open internal procedure, to the expulsion of the PSOE.
This rupture supposes a commotion between the leadership and the socialist militancy, already in the midst of uncertainty due to the complex course of the legislature. Not surprisingly, and as Ábalos himself recalled yesterday in his emotional farewell to the Socialist parliamentary group, his role as PSOE’s organizing secretary was key to mending a fractured party after the 2017 primaries, which returned the leadership in Sánchez, to take him to Moncloa in 2018 and to form the first progressive coalition government in Spain, in 2020.
Ábalos, in fact, seemed to assume yesterday the same manual of resistance that Sánchez adopted after being defenestered by the entire PSOE establishment in 2016, and to start a battle again to regain the leadership of the party, with the breath of militancy “I feel that I face everything, I come alone in my car, I don’t have a secretary, I don’t have anyone behind or next to me. I face all the political power, from one side and the other, and I have to do it alone”, he emphasized.
In his case, however, everything points to him taking a path of no return.
The former minister, in his appearance, wanted to defend his honor and personal reputation and as a deputy “until the last consequences”, to justify “the most important decision of my political life”. He insisted that he is not surrendering, since “I am not accused of anything nor do I have any illicit enrichment”. “I have no need to invoke the principle of presumption of innocence”, he stressed.
Ábalos bitterly regretted the lack of camaraderie and that the PSOE management left him in the lurch. “I would never have imagined myself outside of these acronyms,” he said.
But he rejected Ferraz’s demand that he leave the seat. “If I resigned, it would be interpreted as a sign of guilt, which I do not assume. It would only cause my stigmatization, not political, but personal,” he said. And he warned that he would not slow down “the hunt” of the PP, which is already targeting other ministers and leaders of the PSOE.
He therefore rejected a decision that, in his opinion, would only serve to “pay tribute to the thief”. Despite everything, he assumed the consequences of his breakup, after jumping into the mixed group: “I know what a political attack is”. He already was, for example, when he accompanied Sánchez in the fight to regain command of the PSOE.
Ábalos insisted that his “is not a comfortable decision, it is very hard and very difficult for the staff”. But he justified it forcefully: “I cannot end my political career and my career as a corrupt person, when I am innocent”. And he trusted that one day the leadership of the PSOE would recognize him. “I hope to attend the end of this game forcing those who are now trying to kick me out, through the back door, have to look me in the face”, he challenged.
The departure of Ábalos causes an earthquake in the PSOE. But in Moncloa and Ferraz agree that it will not alter the course of the legislature for the socialist group to lose a seat – it will now have 120 – and for the ex-minister to go to the mixed group with the representatives of Podem, Coalició Canària, the BNG and UPN. “He will vote everything with the PSOE”, they say. They don’t have a single vote left, let alone Ábalos.
