The absences of ministers from the control session of the Congress, sometimes for justified agenda reasons, but many others to avoid showing up in difficult weeks for their portfolios, are beginning to severely test the patience of the Popular Parliamentary Group. Wednesday, during which … It will be the last of the year, seven members of the Executive have already excused their presence. In the midst of the Salazar affair, while the PSOE is plunged into a hotbed of internal criticism, two of the personalities identified in this earthquake will avoid the Lower House, such as the first vice-president of the government, María Jesús Montero, and the minister’s spokesperson, Pilar Alegría.
ABC published this Sunday that Montero and Alegría could become the next political victims of Francisco Salazar, who served as secretary general of Territorial Coordination at the Presidency of the Government and secretary of Action and Electoral Analysis of the Federal Executive of the PSOE. The first, because victims who report sexual harassment accuse him of inaction. The second, because after having defended the “integrity” of her companion at the doors of the Federal Committee from which he was thrown out this summer, she now considers his attitude towards other socialist women as “vomiting”. Last month, Alegría was photographed having dinner in central Madrid with Salazar, in a meeting that sparked controversy and which she limited to the “personal sphere.”
From now on, neither the PP nor the rest of the parliamentary groups will be able to question Montero or Alegría on a scandal that forced the head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, on Saturday to assume “in the first person” the mismanagement of the party in the face of the internal outcry against Salazar. In an informal conversation with journalists, after the institutional event organized at the Lower House on the occasion of Constitution Day, he said that the “mistake” and “responsibility” lay with him. But for the moment, Ferraz has ruled out bringing Salazar before the Prosecutor’s Office, as requested by regional Equality officials, and from Genoa, the panorama is observed with astonishment.
“Not only did Sánchez not take any responsibility, but she imposed silence on the Socialist Party, which leads us to reflect on the possibility of a cover-up,” said the spokesperson for the Popular Parliamentary Group of Congress, Ester Muñoz, on Sunday in a video released by her party. The PP deputy directly accuses the head of the Executive of not allowing his ministers to give explanations when he has not yet done so. “There is not a week without a new socialist scandal. This week we learn about the Salazar affair. “This affair in which the Socialist Party covered up the alleged sexual harassment of Paco Salazar within Moncloa,” he lamented.
“Sánchez not only took no responsibility, but he imposed silence on the Socialist Party”
Ester Munoz
Spokesperson for the Popular Parliamentary Group in Congress
The PP spokesperson in the Lower House pointed out that among the seven ministers who will miss Wednesday’s control session – the last of the year because the following week, the second of the campaign in Extremadura, there will be no plenary session – two are by chance Montero and Alegría. “Missing is María Jesús Montero, whom the circle of the Socialist Party itself designates as one of those responsible for not knowing the whole truth, and Pilar Alegría, that minister who, aware of all these complaints, met and ate with Paco Salazar in an environment of trust,” he added.
For all these reasons, Muñoz announced, the Popular Parliamentary Group will register a proposal to reform the Regulations of Congress so that ministers must duly justify the reasons why they are absent from the control sessions. “Only when they have unavoidable appointments can they miss this check-up session,” he explained. According to PP sources consulted by ABC, the text is already prepared and will be recorded over the next week.
“We know that people from the Socialist Party met with the victims to ask them not to go to the press to explain what they suffered. We also know that a person like María Jesús Montero could have prevented all this truth from being known and we also know that she told her ministers not to appear at the control session”, declared Muñoz, very critical of the attitude of the PSOE, who added: “It cannot be that, at the worst moment of the Socialist Party, at the moment when we learn of this scandal that occurred within Moncloa, the ministers disappear from the plenary session and do not give explanations.
“It cannot be that the moment we learn of this scandal, the ministers disappear from the plenary session”
Ester Munoz
Spokesperson for the Popular Parliamentary Group in Congress
The reform that the PP is going to enshrine, in principle, has few signs of success unless the PSOE and Sumar, with a majority in the Congressional Council – the body that controls the parliamentary rhythms – agree to support a regulatory modification that, today, would harm them. The popular blocked in the Lower House several amendments to the Regulations which, although they were taken into consideration by the majority of the Plenary, see how the deadline for registering amendments is systematically extended, thus preventing their processing. Among them, for example, the proposal to make the debate on the state of the nation compulsory every year. A commitment that Sánchez himself has made in his democratic regeneration plan, even if he has only submitted to this format in 2022 since his arrival at Moncloa in 2018.
However, in the PP they are not resigning and Muñoz affirmed that the President of the Government will have to explain everything that happened in “his environment of trust”. From the Koldo case, for which his two previous secretaries of the Organization, Santos Cerdán and José Luis Ábalos, are under investigation, until now the Salazar case and the possible apathy in the face of internal complaints of sexual harassment. “And he will have to assume responsibilities,” warned the popular.
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