Pedro Sánchez, at first, ordered his colleagues to grit their teeth to withstand the enormous pressure expected when the Koldo case was revealed. The president of the Spanish Government is well aware that the right wants, in this scandal, to collect a political piece of big game, beyond the former minister José Luis Ábalos, now deputy and president of the Interior Commission of the Congress.
A piece of big game, to begin with, such as the secretary of organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, who was the one who took Koldo García to Madrid and placed him as a driver for Ábalos in Ferraz. In the PSOE, they assume that the Popular Party wants to shoot Cerdán, because he is the main negotiator with Junts per Catalunya, while the Amnesty law already has an imminent deadline – March 7 – to unlock… or compromise the course of the entire legislature.
So that Sánchez has not shown himself ready to move the file and hand over the head of Ábalos on a silver platter, as a firewall from the scandal, since the former minister is not even being investigated in the case of alleged corruption which affects who was his personal assistant when he was Minister of Transport and organizational secretary of the Socialist Party, until July 2021, Koldo García.
It may be a matter of hours or days, as some claim in the PSOE, who consider that, in any case, it will be inevitable that Ábalos will hand over his deputy record. Waiting for Sánchez to make a final decision, of course, yesterday the internal pressure on the central government and the leadership of the PSOE began to grow for the former minister to resign his seat in Congress.
The first vice-president of the Spanish Government and deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, already showed Ábalos the exit door yesterday. When he was asked, at an event of the Joly Forum held in Cadiz, if he considered that the former minister should hand over the minutes of deputy to Congress, Montero alleged: “It seems that there is no kind of criminal or of crime to Ábalos, therefore it is up to him to make any decision”.
But then he warned forcefully: “I know what I would do.” “I can’t say what Ábalos wants to do or stop doing, but I know what I would do,” remarked the vice-president of the central government.
Montero thus agreed with the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, who also assured yesterday, in relation to whether the former head of Transport and former secretary of organization of the PSOE should leave his seat because of the Koldo case: “Each one must know what to do at every moment”.
Sánchez himself, on Wednesday from Rabat, already distanced himself “roundly” and showed his “absolute disapproval and reproach” if this murky case of alleged corruption is confirmed. And the secretary of the organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, emphasized: “This direction always acts with corruption by cutting it to pieces.”
A la Moncloa and A Ferraz cling to the fact that “the full weight of the law” falls against corruption, but they remain on the lookout waiting to know the scope of the judicial inquiries. At first they limited the case exclusively to Koldo García, and argued that Ábalos should not hand over the deputy’s report, since, at least, for now, he is not involved in this scandal.
It is the same that Ábalos alleges, who assures that he does not have to prove his innocence, because he is not accused nor does he appear in the prosecutor’s complaint. The ex-minister is reluctant to succumb to the pressure of certain political interests to hand over his record as deputy, well aware that he is not the ultimate goal of the right.
“We’ll see what comes out of the summary”, they allege to the PSOE, and ask for calm so as not to rush. “It will have to be seen”, they insist, and leave the decision to act against Ábalos in the back room in case the affair can splash him as a firewall so that the stain of the scandal does not continue to spread. “We have to wait and see what happens”, corroborate the socialist group in Congress, lest the firewall be quickly overcome and they no longer have the option of controlling the fire.
The problem is that this scandal has a direct impact on one of the flags that Sánchez hoists as the key to his political project and his “clean and transparent” government, that of the fight against corruption that encouraged the motion of no confidence that he overthrew the then head of the Spanish Executive and president of the PP, Mariano Rajoy, and who brought the leader of the PSOE to Moncloa in 2018. For this reason, socialist voices are growing calling to stop any suspicion of doubt that harms the Government central and the PSOE.
