“You have a 24-hour deadline,” PSOE spokesperson Esther Peña announced yesterday, shortly after eleven in the morning. This was Pedro Sánchez's ultimatum for José Luis Ábalos to resign from his seat in Congress, formally transferred at that moment to the former minister, after the weekend negotiations to agree on his departure from the scene for the Koldo case.
Ábalos's first reaction took four hours, but it was not what Sánchez expected. After three in the afternoon, the former minister chose to keep the pulse and resigned as president of the Congressional Interior Commission – a position with which he was compensated in this legislature to expand his payroll – but he continued clinging to the seat.
The deadline granted to Ábalos expires today. In the plenary session of Congress that starts at three in the afternoon, Ábalos will no longer have a place on the PSOE bench. 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 express order was to immediately clear all shadows of corruption in the 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 by 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 who, after receiving many details about the unsuccessful negotiations over the weekend, issued the ultimatum to the former minister. “The federal executive commission of the PSOE has decided, unanimously, to request Ábalos to deliver his minutes to the socialist parliamentary group,” announced Ferraz's spokesperson, Esther Peña. “We know that he is not investigated, nor accused, nor charged, nor does his name appear in the investigation,” she acknowledged. “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 political responsibility,” Peña justified.
The PSOE spokesperson assumed that the summons would take effect. “Abalos is the best example of party orthodoxy, of pure commitment and respect for the history of this party. That is why I have no doubt that he will act accordingly for this greater good that is the PSOE,” she stated. “There is no fault in those who do what they should,” she concluded. But Ábalos, in the first instance, insisted on resisting giving up his 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 would not be an insufficient firewall to stop his offensive due to the Koldo case. Thus, Peña announced that the PSOE will immediately register in Congress the request for the creation of a commission of investigation, to investigate any irregular behavior in the purchase of medical supplies from public administrations during the pandemic.
The first task that will occupy this investigative commission, assured Peña, will be the Koldo case. But not only, since the PSOE intends to direct the focus against the PP. “Everything must be known, nothing can be left in dark corners of headquarters paid for with black money,” said Peña, referring to the PP headquarters in Genoa. “The corrupt have no place here,” he stressed about the PSOE. But next he directed the shot against the case of alleged irregular 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 investigation commission, in the PSOE we are not, what we do is rebel against the shamelessness of all those who wanted to profit while our compatriots died from covid,” Peña warned. And he already predicted that, in reaction to his announcement, the PP would use “small or large reluctance, even strange excuses” for not supporting this investigative commission. “Our organization is embarrassed by everything we have known, I don't care about the case of the commission agent Ayuso or the case of Koldo García, it is absolutely disgusting,” Peña highlighted. “No one can profit from pain.”
At the same time, the current Minister of Transportation, Óscar Puente, announced that he will carry out an internal audit in his department, in two of the public companies that bought masks from the company from which Koldo García allegedly collected bribes.
Given the intention of the Government and the PSOE to get rid of all shadows of corruption, the reaction of the PP was immediate and yesterday it registered the request to create another commission of investigation into the Koldo case, but in the Senate, where the formation of Alberto Núñez Feijóo enjoys a comfortable absolute majority.
The PP spokesperson, Borja Sémper, has already made it very 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 Víctor Torres be resolved. , Francina Armengol, Óscar Puente, Santos Cerdán... Sémper urged Ábalos to “pull the blanket,” because he warned him that his PSOE colleagues “are going to leave him behind.”
