Salvador Illa appeared yesterday afternoon in Congress to testify on the first day of the commission that investigates the purchase of health equipment during the pandemic after the corruption plot orchestrated around Koldo García, the former adviser of the former Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos. He defended the “prudent” and “effective” management of the Ministry of Health that he directed in person.
Two days before repeating his appearance in the Senate on Wednesday, Illa described his performance as “correct”. “We didn’t do things wrong, we did them as well as we could.”
And, despite the insistence of the PP spokesman, Elías Bendodo, during his interrogation, he limited the occasions on which he saw Koldo García to “only once”: “I referred him to the technicians and they concluded that nothing would be bought . I did what I had to do”, the PSC leader justified himself by matching his argument with that of his former chief of staff, Víctor Francos, who earlier in the Senate reiterated the rejection of the offers of medical equipment, including those of the plot, for not being among their competences.
Despite the tense questioning of Bendodo, who accused Illade of being a whistleblower for pirate companies, the harshest interventions came, paradoxically, from Junts, ERC and the commons -coalised in the parliamentary group of Sumar-.
Three investiture partners of the socialist president, Pedro Sánchez. But also three rivals of the PSC in the next elections in Catalonia, as evidenced by the pre-campaign atmosphere that overshadowed the interventions.
The most incisive was Míriam Nogueras. The Junts spokeswoman relied on international socio-health reports to criticize Illa that the “real data is so far” from her version that it is far from being able to be considered “efficient”. And for all this he accused the former Minister of Health of being “the main person responsible for the lack of transparency, foresight and rigor, and even for the frivolity in the management of public money” during the pandemic.
Sumar, for her part, said one was cold and one was hot. Aware that some of its current leaders were part of the Government that managed the pandemic, the spokeswoman for the commons, Aina Vidal, limited the attacks to Illa, and not to the Ministry of Health or the coalition Executive, and blamed that, despite the hard times, he lowered his guard in the controls: “It seems strange that no one suspected that one of the companies, after all co-trencadores, was dedicated to the commercialization of alcoholic beverage marketing products”, he reproach
Seeing the ease with which Illa neutralized the previous interrogations of PP and Vox, Gabriel Rufián tried to take advantage of the “scarce 10 minutes” of ERC’s turn. And, knowing that the leader of the PSC would not have time to answer them all, he was the one who asked him more questions: “How can it be that the chauffeur of a minister is the main supplier of contracts in the middle of a pandemic? What is decent about paying 3 million euros to plaster manufacturers for respirators that did not arrive?”, he chained with the intention of leaving as many doubts in the air as possible about the candidate who leads all the polls of the Catalan elections.
