Isabel Díaz Ayuso does not want Esperanza Aguirre's frogs to croak during her mandate. But the pretext used so that Ignacio González, former president of the Community prosecuted for various cases of corruption in what is known as Operation Lezo, does not have a leading role on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Statute of Autonomy of Madrid has ended up making the planning of the events difficult. by implying vetoes to other former regional presidents such as the cases of the current president of the Senate, Pedro Rollán, and Ángel Garrido.
The root of the controversy is the extraordinary plenary session that will be held on Friday, December 1 in the Madrid Assembly for the 40th anniversary of the Chamber and the 25th anniversary of its current headquarters, in Vallecas. The intervention of the former regional presidents who preceded Isabel Díaz Ayuso was scheduled for that event. But not everyone.
According to El País, the socialist Joaquín Leguina (1983-1995) and the popular Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón (1995-2003), Esperanza Aguirre (2003-2012) and Cristina Cifuentes (2015-2018) will speak. And Ignacio González (2012-2015), one of the main leaders of the PP affected by cases of corruption in the Community of Madrid and who, together with the former counselor of the Presidency Francisco Granados, was branded by Aguirre as "the frogs of the PP", will not do so. " in an attempt to limit the corruption that plagued the party to mere "isolated events."
To ensure that González is removed from the list of speakers, the current president of the Chamber, Enrique Ossorio (PP), has decided that only elected presidents, that is, those who headed the electoral list at the time, can access the platform. . Not so those elected in the Assembly, as is the case of Ángel Garrido, who was former popular president after the resignation of Cristina Cifuentes.
The reason for leaving out a former popular leader who has not been involved in corruption and, above all, and that the PP has not considered a less unfair measure, is due to the fact that Garrido ended his political career in the ranks of Cs where he ended up in 2019 when he saw that the candidate Isabel Díaz Ayuso did not plan to include him on her electoral list. Hence, no one in the party seems to care in the least that Garrido is a collateral victim of the twisting of protocol so that the ghosts of corruption do not tarnish the current direction of the regional formation.
But Garrido has not sat idly by and, always according to El País, has expressed his discomfort with an email sent to Ossorio: "I have been informed by the Presidency of the Assembly that the Board has made the decision not to include my intervention in the plenary session (...) it seems that the reason for my unusual exclusion is found in the search for a 'discreet' solution that would avoid the intervention of a former president [Ignacio González], whose procedural situation would make this uncomfortable. participation in the Assembly at the moment," he adds before concluding that "I understand that this is something that the Board must resolve in the way it deems most appropriate, but not by choosing a formula that, without any legal, regulatory or institutional argument, undermines my dignity as former president of the Community of Madrid, which I believe I have served with absolute dedication and honor, simply because in this way the problem is avoided."
