The first ticket to fall was that of José Luis Ábalos, but others will follow, says the PP, while the parties that support the government coalition expect his expulsion from the socialist group, although they would have preferred that he resign from the minutes and leave his seat free, stop the crisis unleashed by the corruption scandal that has rocked the PSOE for a week, when the existence of a plot to collect illegal commissions became known in the purchase and sale of masks in the midst of a pandemic directed by Koldo García, who was an advisor to the former Minister of Transport.
If he knew and did nothing, Pedro Sánchez is an accomplice for not reporting it to the courts, and if he did not know, he is guilty of negligence for not having controlled what was happening in his closest circle . This is the argument that has been exploited by the PP since the beginning of the crisis, and yesterday Miguel Tellado, its spokesman in Congress, spoke about it, denying that the ostracism of Ábalos can serve as a firewall for the Prime Minister spanish
By action or omission of the Executive, the Koldo case jumps over Ábalos and becomes the Sánchez case, reiterates the PP, which denounces that there are ramifications of the plot beyond the Ministry of Transport that affect the departments of Interior and Health and the autonomous governments of the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands.
Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Salvador Illa, Francina Armengol and Ángel Víctor Torres are, therefore, the pieces of big game that the popular people have set their sights on once Ábalos, one of the four members of “the Peugeot gang”, who is as Tellado named the group that accompanied Sánchez on the motoring tour of Spain to win the PSOE primaries in 2017.
According to the parliamentary spokesperson of the PP, the plot “depends on the top” of the PSOE and on the “highest levels” of the Government, since its origin is in the circle of maximum confidence of the socialist leader, in which, in addition to Koldo García -investigated for fraudulently enriching himself through illegal commissions- and Ábalos -on whom no accusation weighs-, there was Santos Cerdán, current secretary of organization of Ferraz.
If the unknown is to know the degree of knowledge of the president of the Government of the facts that are being investigated when he relieved Ábalos, in 2021, Tellado clarified it: “No one believes that he did not know”. But despite the fact that this was not the case, he conceded, this would not exempt Sánchez from responsibility, because it would be negligence. Even worse, even, if he knew it and did nothing, because then, explained the leader of the PP, we would be facing the “main political responsible” of the “looting”, who would thus become the “concealer” of ‘a very serious crime.
Be that as it may, Sánchez will have to answer today in the control session in Congress to the battery of questions that the PP, with Alberto Núñez Feijóo at the head, has prepared for him, and which will affect, as Tellado advanced, the “hypocrisy” and the “cynicism” of saying that “who pays” while promoting an Amnesty law to “pardon criminals in exchange for seven votes”.
Its allies will make it less difficult for the PSOE. On behalf of the multi-national group of Sumar, Aina Vidal, of the commons, Àgueda Micó, of Compromís, and Íñigo Errejón, of Més Madrid, agreed yesterday to demand the resignation of Ábalos and to regret the slowness of the PSOE to put an end to the “show”, but they also remembered that there are other administrations, such as the Community of Madrid, presided over by the popular Isabel Díaz Ayuso, which have been immersed in “corrupt dynamics that degrade democracy”, which was the formula that used by the spokesperson of Podem, Javier Sánchez, to refer to the contracts awarded to the company of the brother of the Madrid leader in the health crisis.
Nevertheless, Vidal described this case of “unacceptable corruption” as “bad news for the entire Government” and, before the appearance of Ábalos to announce that he will not resign from the minutes, he urged the PSOE to “solve the issue”. “There cannot be impunity, there cannot be different forms of treatment”, claimed the deputy, who denounced the “pact of omertà” which, in her opinion, was reached by the three majority forces in Parliament (PSC , ERC and Junts) when the commons demanded more transparency in the emergency contracts signed during the pandemic.
And if Compromís sees it as “nonsense” for the PSPV deputy to continue in Congress “because clinging to the position at this time goes against the Valencian people”, the BNG will not welcome the mixed group, according to its spokesman, Néstor Rego: “We already have it full”.
