José Luis Ábalos, a political animal, dedicated to the Socialist Party for decades, the same formation that has now dropped him due to the so-called Koldo case, went yesterday to give explanations to the Senate about the masks contracts during the pandemic that are being investigated, about D elcygate and about its current relationship with the PSOE.
Ábalos, who maintains his deputy record, but in the mixed group, after being suspended from militancy by his party, responded with a political waist to all the senators, to whom he thanked the tone, despite the serious accusations that some launched against him, especially from the PP.
He did so during his speech at the investigative commission held in the Senate for the Koldo case, with reference to Koldo García, his former advisor and confidant, with whom after learning of his arrest in February has broken all communication.
Following the Delorme operation, directed by the National Court and promoted by the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office and the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, the PSOE made a cordon sanitaire with both Koldo García and Ábalos. “Do you feel disappointed with Koldo?” Socialist senator Alfonso Gil asked him yesterday. “I have had so many disappointments in recent times that it seems that I am collecting disappointments”, said the ex-Minister of Transport and ex-Secretary of Organization of the PSOE.
The party has left Ábalos aside despite the fact that, as he has clarified, he is not being investigated nor is there currently any suspicion on him.
Despite the fact that the former number three of the party did not want to draw blood against the formation, he did admit that he does not know of any precedent for what they have done to him; to ask him for the act of deputy and suspend him from militancy without there being any judicial process against him and that is why he announced that he will “appeal” against this decision.
“And he asks me if I think my reputation is damaged?”, he pointed out in response to PNB senator Estefanía Beltrán. “I have been suspended from militancy due to political responsibility”, recalled Ábalos, who assured that he believes that the PSOE made that move influenced by the atmosphere and with the urgency of giving an immediate response after the arrest of his former advisor. “I already knew that everything that would happen, had to happen. I knew it was facing the gallery. I don’t have much of a political future, even before the mixed group I was already retiring”, he clarified.
This same senator took the opportunity to ask him if it seems normal for Sánchez not to call him to talk to him in this crisis, a question to which Ábalos answered again with his political rhetoric. “For me, normal things… Normality is not an absolute term. It’s like friendship. It is a relative term very influenced by environments”, he added.
Ábalos recognized that Koldo García was an advisor of his trust, with whom he could count 24 hours a day, seven days a week. After the first reports, the former minister lowered the tone against his ex-advisor and defended that his patrimonial increases, which he claimed to be unaware of, would have taken place after he left the ministry in 2021. He also took the opportunity to deny the existence of any plot within his ministry. “I don’t have to admit any guilt because I don’t have any. This about Redemptorism…”, he quipped in response to questions from Confederate Left Senator Juanjo Ferrer.
The former minister acknowledged that it was the “human factor” that pushed him to take Koldo García to the ministry, because he was a person he trusted. One of the points that the UCO emphasized in its police reports is that Ábalos placed García, in addition to an adviser, as a Renfe adviser. Instead of denying it, Ábalos acknowledged that he gave both García and the rest of his advisers a position as advisers, among other things so that they could have a financial supplement.
Ábalos believes that he has been the victim of a “parallel trial” in which the presumption of innocence is not respected. “With everything I’ve been through, I can only trust in one thing: justice. And not because of the virtues it may have, out of necessity. Because I no longer have anyone to trust.” The former minister described the whole case as a “circus”.
