“It has a 24-hour deadline”, announced yesterday, shortly after eleven in the morning, the spokesperson of the PSOE, Esther Peña. It was Pedro Sánchez’s ultimatum for José Luis Ábalos to resign from his seat in Congress, formally transferred to the ex-minister at the same time, after the negotiations over the weekend to agree on his departure did not bear fruit for the Koldo case.
Ábalos’ first reaction took four hours, but it was not what Sánchez expected. After three in the afternoon, the ex-minister chose to keep the pulse and resigned as president of the Congress’s Interior committee – a position with which he was compensated this legislature to expand the payroll – but he continued to cling to the seat
The deadline granted to Ábalos expires today. At the plenary session of the Congress that begins at three in the afternoon, Ábalos will no longer have a place in the PSOE group. If he does not give in, he will be expelled from the socialist group and will have to take refuge in the mixed group of the Lower House.
Sánchez’s definitive order was to immediately remove any shadow of corruption in the central government and the PSOE with the departure of Ábalos, after his personal assistant, Koldo García, was charged last week in an alleged case of corruption for the collection of illegal commissions in the purchase and sale of masks for various public administrations.
In the absence of Sánchez – yesterday in Barcelona and Paris –, the formula chosen as a last resort to try to pressure Ábalos was a meeting of the PSOE executive which, after receiving many details about the unsuccessful negotiations of the weekend, issued the ultimatum to the former minister. “The federal executive commission of the PSOE has decided, unanimously, to ask Ábalos to hand over the minutes to the socialist parliamentary group,” announced Ferraz’s spokeswoman, Esther Peña. “We know that he is not investigated, nor pointed out, nor imputed, nor does his name appear in the investigation”, he said. “We do not set ourselves up as judges, we are not prosecutors, we do not judge. But, despite everything, the federal executive commission considers that there is a political responsibility”, he justified.
The PSOE spokeswoman took it for granted that the location would take effect. “Ábalos is the best example of party orthodoxy, of pure commitment and respect for the history of this party. That’s why I have no doubt that he will act accordingly for this greater good that is the PSOE”, he stated. “He who does what he has to do is not to blame,” he said, but Ábalos insisted on resisting handing over the seat.
In a defensive and at the same time offensive strategy, Sánchez wanted in any case to counterattack the Popular Party so that the fall of Ábalos is not an insufficient firewall to stop the offensive for the Koldo case. Therefore, Peña announced that the PSOE will immediately register in Congress the request for the creation of a commission of inquiry, to investigate all irregular behavior in the purchase of health equipment from public administrations during the pandemic.
The first task that the investigation commission will have, Peña assured, will be the Koldo case. But not only this one, since the PSOE intends to direct the focus against the PP. “Everything must be known, nothing can be left in dark corners of their offices paid for with black money”, explained Peña, with reference to the headquarters of the PP in Génova. “There is no place for the corrupt here”, he remarked about the PSOE. But then he led the offensive against the case of the alleged irregular purchase and sale of masks in which the brother of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, was involved.
“No one should feel intimidated by this commission of inquiry, in the PSOE we are not, what we do is to rebel against the shamelessness of all those who wanted to profit while our compatriots were dying because of the covid”, warned Peña. And he already predicted that, as a reaction to his announcement, the PP would show “small or big reluctance, even peregrine excuses” for not supporting the commission of inquiry. “Our organization is ashamed of everything we have met, the case of commissioner Ayuso is the same for me as the case of Koldo García, it is absolutely disgusting”, remarked Peña. “No one can profit from pain”.
At the same time, the current Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, announced that he will carry out an internal audit in his department, in two of the public companies that bought him masks from the company from which Koldo García allegedly obtained payments.
Faced with the claim of the Government and the PSOE to free themselves from any shadow of corruption, the reaction of the PP did not take long and just yesterday it registered the request to create another commission of inquiry into the Koldo case, but in the Senate, in which the formation of Alberto Núñez Feijóo enjoys a wide absolute majority.
The spokesperson of the PP, Borja Sémper, already made it clear that the PSOE cannot pretend that Ábalos is the only “firewall” of this crisis, for which they also demand that the responsibilities of Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Salvador Illa, Ángel be resolved Víctor Torres, Francina Armengol, Óscar Puente, Santos Cerdán… Sémper urged Ábalos to “discover the cake”. He warned him that his PSOE colleagues “will leave him hanging”.
