The Central Electoral Board (JEC) will communicate this Thursday the opening of a sanction file to the Minister of Territorial Policy and Government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, for violating her duty of neutrality during the electoral period from the press conference after the Council of Ministers, as confirmed by sources familiar with the agreement.
With this, there are already three consecutive complaints in which the JEC warns the Government spokesperson in relation to article 50.2 of the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime (LOREG) that prohibits from the call for elections -published in the BOE at the beginning of April- until its celebration "any act organized or financed" by the public powers "that contain allusions to the achievements or achievements obtained by the public authorities".
The first warning by the JEC to Rodríguez for violating his duty of neutrality in the electoral period in public statements was after a press conference from the Council of Ministers on April 4 in which, according to the arbitration body, the spokesperson made " evaluative manifestations of achievements in terms of employment, with an electoral connotation", when commenting on the unemployment data.
The second warning came in response to a complaint filed by the PP of Madrid against some statements by Rodríguez also at the press conference after the meeting of the Council of Ministers, in which he made an assessment in response to journalists about the housing policy of the PP and criticized Alberto Núñez Feijóo affirming that he "skips the Constitution".
According to the arbitration body, Rodríguez issued, from an "institutional act" such as the Council's press conference, "evaluative statements that disqualify policies and programs of a certain political party", in this case the PP, at the same time that "it they issue negative assessments" regarding a political leader, like Feijóo, "which carries unequivocal electoral connotations".
Just yesterday, the minister charged again against the PP, specifically against the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, on account of the incident with the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños in the celebrations of May 2. Some incidents that Rodríguez described as "one more step in a campaign to delegitimize this government."
“It is a campaign of the Popular Party, and I say this with regret, because this type of campaign, to attack legitimate governments, is taking place in other parts of the world. But in other parts of the world they are led by anti-establishment or extremist parties. The unfortunate thing is that in Spain this campaign is being carried out by the PP, which was a government party," said the minister at the press conference after the Council of Ministers. She thus alluded to the behavior of Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro when they lost the elections in the United States and in Brazil. In Moncloa, they thus equate Ayuso with “anti-system populism and Trumpism”.
